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Julian Clary talks to Bella Todd about Cinderella, censorship and sharing his festive season with the ghost of Noel Coward

When Julian Clary first appeared in Cinderella, nine years ago at Brighton’s own Theatre Royal, he entered the stage in a chariot pulled by a pair of hunky young choir boys, bare-chested save for a leather harness.

Since then, the comedian has done many serious-minded things, including knuckling down to writing two (highly acclaimed) novels, sustaining a popular column for The New Statesman, and tracing his ancestors, none of whom turned out to have been The Marquis Of Mince, for TV’s Who Do You Think You Are?

He has even presented opposite that totem of wholesomeness, Fern Britton, on This Morning, where he learnt the art of “linking from an item about a woman who’s lost her children in some tragic accident to an item about saveloys”. Moreover, and not to put too fine a point on it, he recently turned 50.

So will he be utilising an alternative mode of transport when he reprises his role in Cinderella at The Hawth this season? Not a bit of it. “There are many things I feel I can no longer do now I’m 50,” he reasons. “I think one has to evolve, in the interests of dignity. I mean, I wouldn’t wear a leather harness these days. But I’m still more than happy to appear on stage with those that do.”

There was a time when Julian, the master of filthy innuendo whose only other brush with light entertainment had involved telling an x-rated joke about then-Chancellor Norman Lamont at a pre-watershed British Comedy Awards, turned his nose up at panto.

But Julian’s mother and chief advisor (the woman we also have to thank for talking him into overcoming his “fear of failure and humiliation” long enough to do Strictly Come Dancing) is a firm believer in saying ‘yes’ to opportunities. And Cinderella seems to have struck a particular chord. This will be Julian’s eighth outing as Prince Charming’s aide de camp, Dandini. And, though he spent one run in a wheelchair after chipping a foot bone in the ballroom scene, and another with flu and a sick bucket in the wings, he hasn’t missed a show.

Partly it’s Julian’s high level of involvement with the script, which he stuffs with extra double entendres each year. Partly it’s the set of seven ridiculously OTT outfits, all hand-made for him by a famous costumier who, according to Clary, fell down the stairs and died as soon as he’d sewn the final stitch. Then there’s the flexibility of the format – this year he’ll be incorporating a quick-step for fans of his performances on Strictly Come Dancing. And he also values the camaraderie of panto.

“A lot of the cast have been the same for years, so we’re old friends,” he says. “But I’ve also done pantos where people really hated each other. I did it one year with the ugly sisters muttering vile things to each other in the wings before they went on, then trying to step on each others’ lines and block each others’ light and all this nonsense. Another year there was lots of sulking back stage ‘cos the sisters found out the Shetland ponies who pull Cinderella’s carriage were on twice as much as them!”

Though you might think the thigh-slapping spirit of panto at odds with the vulnerability that is also an integral part of Julian’s appeal (and was never more perceptible than during his recent Lord Of The Mince stand-up tour), he’s found a place in Cinders for that, too.

“There was lots of sulking back stage ‘cos the ugly sisters found out the Shetland ponies were on twice as much as them!”

“I’ve never gone in for self-confidence, that whole sort of John Barrowman way of presenting yourself,” he says. “And there is a vulnerable side to Dandini. In my mind, I think he’s secretly in love with the Prince. But of course this is a subtext that we don’t trouble the children with…”

Whatever his motives, Julian seems to be the sort of jewel people are looking for in their panto crown: at current booking levels, Cinderella is The Hawth’s most successful panto in 15 years.

But before he climbs back into his chariot, Julian is enjoying a week of “lolling about” at chez Clary: a tumbledown farmhouse in Kent that was once owned by Noel Coward and is, supposedly, still home to his ghost.

“There’s a whiff of Noel in every room,” says Julian. “I don’t even feel like it’s my house, I feel I’m just sort of the keeper of the keys. If you read the diaries, Blithe Spirit is kind of set here. And there’s added pleasure in imagining Noel and Marlene [Dietrich] and all the fabulous parties that he was famous for going on here. Apparently his ghost lives in the upstairs bedroom.”

It is here that Clary – in the company of 14 close family members as well as the additional ghosts of a 17th century washer woman, a laughing knight and a ‘confused youth’ (“confused is putting it a bit lightly – he fell in love with a girl from the village and drowned himself in the pond out the back”) will be spending Christmas on his day off from panto. Next year he will hole up here, possibly with a supply of his housekeeper’s “very rustic” homemade jam, and start work on his third novel.

“Censorship is all over the place,” he says when we ask whether the BBC’s recent edicts concerning comedy output have concerned him. “I wanted to call my last book The Devil Wears Incontinence Pants and the publishers wouldn’t let me because 20 per cent of all books are sold in supermarkets and they thought it might put people off buying food.

“So there are always obstacles in the way of the creative process, is all I can say. And now we have the same old problem with my next novel. Hasn’t the world come to something when you can’t call your own book The Rim With The View?”

Cinderella is at The Hawth, Crawley from 12 December 2009 until 3 January 2010. 01293 553636, http://tickets.hawth.co.uk

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.