Panto - Michael Coveney gets in festive mood with Britain's queen of comedy

What is it about pantomime that gets everyone going? Ian McKellen has been agonising about the problems of a knight playing a dame - he is Widow Twankey in Aladdin at the Old Vic this Christmas. It must be hard if you are an actor rather than a personality. When the late Les Dawson came on as a dame, after all, he was really just Les Dawson in a frock; he wasn't acting.

Some people declare each year how much they hate pantomime. Others lament that the golden age of pantomime is long gone. Certainly, the Victorian extravaganzas at Drury Lane gloried in the pioneering fusion of scenic spectacle, live music, huge casts and music-hall stars. The common complaint now is that the pantomime is sullied by pop songs, starlets from television soaps and assorted minor celebrities such as the transsexual Nadia from Big Brother (in Peter Pan at Southampton) or "H" from Steps (in Dick Whittington at Brighton).

But is such puritanism appropriate? The mix of TV stars and pop idols has its own charm. And however good McKellen may or may not be at the Old Vic, the real stars of panto are lowbrow, high-stepping veteran dames such as John Inman and Danny La Rue (appearing, respectively if not respectably, at Richmond in Surrey and Cardiff). As for personality, the special ingredient McKellen fears he lacks, you should not miss Brian Conley's Buttons in Cinderella (this year at Plymouth), one of the great popular turns of our day.

Before sampling the first pantomime of the season - the authentic and charming Sinbad and the Diamond Princess at the delightful theatre in Chipping Norton - I swotted up on some pantomime lore with two of British entertainment's most enduring and intriguing stars.

Who would have thought that Julian Clary - so superior to those pouting suburban wrist-flappers Larry Grayson and Dale Winton - would become a pantomime star? For the fifth year running, he plays Dandini in Cinderella, this season at the Bristol Hippodrome. Dandini is the Prince's sidekick who gets to swap places. Clary turns his promotion into a pink and palatial progress through seven costume changes, each more extravagant than the last. No aide-de-camp was ever camper, no right-hand man more manipulative. It is one of the most unusual and original panto performances ever.

"I regard it as a work in progress," Clary says. "It is entirely plot-driven. We don't have someone coming on with a puppet. We have ten dancers, four ponies and splendid special effects." Clary's father was a policeman, and his first memories of pantomime are at the police social club in Hampton Court. "Do you want a ticket for the policeman's ball?" Danny La Rue used to ask in his cabaret act. "No thanks, I don't dance." "It's not a dance, it's a raffle." That kind of innuendo is a Clary speciality, but he knows the kids don't decipher the rudeness. He's there for the mums and dads.

"Pantomime has to work as an enchantment, not a knacker's yard for performers on the way out. I watch the transformation scene in the wings each night and it always moves me. The other nice thing about being in panto is that it solves the New Year problem. I'm too busy to worry about going to parties or getting depressed."

Dandini was traditionally a female role, as was the prince, whom Fenella Fielding recalls playing at the start of her career 50 years ago. She is a little coy about her on-stage same-sex romance with Cinders. "I have very specific memories, but I can't possibly go into all that," she sighs teasingly. This year, Fielding is starring as Fairy Bowbells in Dick Whittington at the Secombe (as in Harry) Theatre in Sutton, Surrey. "I'm going to psyche myself up as the Guardian of the Good and sing a couple of songs, one of which is almost certain to be 'Nobody Loves a Fairy When She's 40'; oh no I can't, can I possibly?" "Oh yes you can," I respond, getting in the mood.

The most popular pantomime is Cinderella, derived variously from Rossini's opera La Cenerentola, the Grimm Brothers and a French version of the glass slipper story by the 17th-century French poet Charles Perrault. But Sinbad has even more cultural accretions, from 12th- century Persia, the Arabian Nights folk stories and the legendary myths of Odys-seus and the Old Man of the Sea.

The great joy of Sinbad at Chipping Norton is that all of its ingredients have been both honoured and refreshed by the fraternal writing team of the dramatist Tony Bicat and the composer Nick Bicat. Simon Higlett's designs are spare but colourful, the costumes by Tina Bicat (this is a family show on both sides of the curtain) ingenious and gorgeous. There is also a tap-dancing Camilla the Camel with fluttering pink eyelashes, a nasty huge bird called Giant Roc, a pair of misplaced tourist guides in search of their Saga louts ("It's not Ibiza!") and a tribe of childish slaves in the diamond mines of - "look out, he's behind you" - Ali Bin Miser. The geography is good ("Welcome to Mesopotamia" is a great opening number), the moral issues clear, the sweet-throwing riotous.

McKellen thinks that if your hero is born in Baghdad (as was Aladdin), then you can't help mentioning the news. But the point about pantomime is that whatever the show, the news is always with us. No other theatrical event, not even David Hare's Stuff Happens, binds its audience and actors in such a common language of culture and democracy. And the hundreds of thousands who turn up each year all over the country don't need to be told as much by the likes of me or McKellen.

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