Triggers are wonderful things...

 I know this will look like a set up, but I honestly didn't plan it.

Several hon. members "Oh yes you did!"

Self: "Oh no I didn't!"

In yesterday's screed, I briefly mentioned the Palladium's Christmas pantomime, Sleeping Beauty. I noted that the show's website mentioned that it "contained innuendo". 

Different people have different opinions about smutty jokes. Kenneth Williams said that if he was given a script to read and found that it contained a double entendre, he whipped it out. The other day at the Sea Shanty session, a lady asked me for a song that contained a lot of innuendo. So I gave her one. It was an old music-hall number about a farmer purchasing a male hen from the market. I thought long and hard before singing it. 

Self: "So, what happened to my career as a serious cultural commentator?"

Several hon. members: "It's behind you!"

I positively like pantomime, in small doses. The annual pie-in-the-face routine. The shoe-horning of that year's pop songs and some forgotten music hall number into a plot borrowed from Grimm or the Arabian Nights. The moment when the right hand side of the auditorium has to try and sing louder than the left hand side of the auditorium. The assurance that we are the best Friday night audience they've had all week. The haunted house routine during which Snow White or Cinderella is followed around the stage by ghosties and ghoulies. ("I don't want to be caught by the ghosties" "Well, I don't want to be caught by the....") 

The last few pantos I've seen in Bristol and Bath actually contained very few over-the-kids-heads dirty jokes. Dick Whittington contained one, count it, one joke about the principle boy's first name. (Another character was interrupted while singing a Christmas song. "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire; Jack Frost nipping at my..." "Dick!") What I did notice was a lot of very child-friendly scatological humour (poo jokes) which have of course become much more acceptable in mainstream juvenile fiction, what with Captain Underpants and all that. ("I was banned from Bristol swimming baths for having a wee in the pool." "Oh, that's a bit harsh, we've all done that...." "Yes, but not from the top diving board.") 

But the Palladium show starred Julian Clary, self-described "renowned homosexual"; he of the "fisting Norman Lamont" remark ("talk about a red box"). So perhaps the smut-o-meter went further into the blue than it would have done in the Westuv England. Catherine Tate's material isn't always one hundred per cent clean, either.

But if we are to believe the Daily Mail, and why shouldn't we, it didn't go down terribly well with the audience. 

Fans WALK OUT of Catherine Tate's smutfest panto!

Metro concurs: 

Families walk out of Catherine Tate panto after branding it a smutfest. 

Both stories seem to be substantially based on TripAdviser quotes: the majority of which are less bothered about the rudery and more concerned that it wasn't very funny. None of the quotes point to a specific incident of anyone walking out, although it is mentioned that on one night there was, shockingly, no standing ovation. Neither paper can point to any risque joke in particular, but the blurb on the show's website leaves us in no doubt as to the likely tone of the evening: 

"The West End’s biggest Christmas show....with that age-old fairytale message: whilst one small prick can be deadly, at The London Palladium you’re promised the happiest of endings."

I believe that last year Julian Clary entered the stage on board a full sized fire-engine and immediately made a remark about his "hose". 

But it does genuinely seem that some of the families involved may have purchased the very expensive tickets without quite realising what kind of a show it was. The Metro piece notes that "The modern retelling of the classic fairytale is shown at family-friendly times of 2:30pm and 7:30pm at the theatre" where the Daily Mail says that "Customers expected a family-friendly affair given the show times of 2.30pm and 7.30pm". 

Metro cites a disgruntled customer saying "‘Sadly I didn’t realise this was an ‘adult style’ panto."

Didn't you? Well, in that case, I can see how you might be perturbed. 

What a pity no-one thought to issue a trigger warning.