EastEnders' "Angie" will be our panto villain in Brighton this Christmas

Aladdin take two will be at the Brighton Centre from Thursday to Tuesday, December 22-27 (excluding Christmas Day): “We were supposed to do the Brighton Centre last year but myself and David Hill, our producer and director, got Covid which of course led to other people getting it and we had to cancel,” Anita says. “So I'm really happy that we are able to do it this year. Last year was just so close to the wire. We were due to start rehearsals on the Monday and then I went down with it. So it is really great to get the chance again. Just five days. Ten shows in five days, and it is the first panto that they've done there. I suppose they don't want to have too much of a long run just to see how it goes so it's a short sharp run and then maybe next year they will extend it.

“And it's going to be great fun. It means we can all relive our childhood and it's just so traditional. It's absolutely one of the traditional things that we do. I get to play Abanazar and that's the thing with pantos. They are like fairy tales and the stories are just so ageless. They have all got little morals to them and they have wonderfully drawn characters and the baddies are really bad and the goodies are really good and it's a lovely mix.”

Anita first did panto in Babes In The Wood in Watford when she was in her 20s: “And from then on I tended to do principal boy. I was Aladdin mainly but I've also done Dick Whittington but I've also done Mother Goose, and really I think the essence is the same as it was when I first started. It is about telling a really good exciting children's story as memorably as you can. Sometimes you have variety acts and you go off and there's a ventriloquist but really for me it’s about the tradition and the more faithful you are to the story, the better the pantomime will be. I think I've done pantos pretty much the whole way through my career. And it's lovely to have that interaction with the children. The great thing about panto is that you can have a bit more free rein and you can play around with the audience.

“I did panto during EastEnders and actually EastEnders was a launch for me actually earning money while doing panto which was a bit of a nice surprise. I suddenly crept up the bill rather being right down there at the bottom. There I was on the poster!

“In fact, EastEnders did change everything for me. It changed my whole life in every sense and it was a great part. It was a joy to play Angie Watts and afterwards it meant that people came to me with parts rather than me having to go around begging for scripts. And also it was how I met my husband (Brian May). It was while I was still doing EastEnders and if I hadn’t had the chance to go to the things I went to doing EastEnders then I wouldn't have met him.” Also it was wonderful to create the role: “Julia Smith was wonderful as the executive producer. She more or less gave me carte blanche with the make-up and with costumes.”

The point is that Anita had a sure sense of Angie: “I'd worked in pubs in the East End. I used to go into pubs and I knew publicans in the East End. I knew that world. I was born in the East End and there was also a bit of my mother in there, that sense of humour, quick to lose temper but equally quick to get over it, and that's what there was in Angie. But of course we didn't know it would all be so successful. I didn't realise it would catapult me onto being on the front page of newspapers. That was difficult in a way because that had never happened to me before. I never dreamed it would be me on the front pages.”

But Anita coped: “The pressure was there but I didn't get the part until I was in my early 30s. I'd been around for a while. And I had my East End upbringing and my family and it all meant that I was pretty grounded so it was never too much of a struggle.”