The King’s Glasgow Pantomime celebrates its 50th birthday this December. So does one of its stars, Gavin Mitchell — which seems apt. Though best known to television viewers as “Boaby” the Barman in TV sitcom Still Game, Gavin has been a regular on the King’s Christmas stage for the best part of a decade.
“It’s always an honour to be involved with the King’s,” he insists. “It was the first theatre I went to as a child, and the panto was the first ever piece of theatre I saw there. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would walk on that stage, following in the footsteps of such amazing stars. So to be a part of the 50th anniversary show is incredible.”
Indeed, Gavin’s happy to accept that his early panto experiences at the King’s — seeing Rikki Fulton, Walter Carr and Una McLean in Robinson Crusoe in 1974, for example — helped inspire his dreams to be an actor. “A lot of things influenced me, though,” he accepts. “My father was originally a film projectionist, so he used to take me to big event movies: the Bond films, Zulu, Lawrence of Arabia — the really big movies off the time. And there was also television. I was one of the first generation who was brought up in front of the telly; I watched things like The Man from UNCLE and Star Trek and wanted to play them in the back garden.
“I think I harboured the idea of being an actor for years, though it was kind of frowned upon when you came from a working class area. People looked at me slightly askance: ‘You want to be… what? No, you’ll get a real job. You’ll no be doing that. No fae Springburn!’”
It wasn’t Gavin’s only frustrated ambition. “My dream was to go to arts school,” he says. “Art was always my first love and passion, but I’d been given the wrong instructions for the qualifications I needed and then, when I went to get the right qualifications, I had a bit of a breakdown and never made it. So I just went off and did other things. I worked with bands; I went to Berlin; for a time I was a labourer with a landscape gardening firm by day and a DJ in a French Gay Club by night!”
However, one particular theatre was to change Gavin’s life; not the King’s — that would be too neat — but the much lauded Citizens Theatre in the Gorbals. “That’s where everything came together,” Gavin says. “I’d just come back to Glasgow from Exeter and bumped into a friend on the subway. Ironically, he was about to do an all-night session painting the Citz’s panto set. Knowing I could paint and learning I’d brought back this amazing scrumpy cider from Exeter, he ‘persuaded’ me to join him. From there on in I got bits of casual work at the Citz — paintwork and stuff — and then my first job as an extra.”
After several years’ work — including in the well-remembered production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and her children starring Glenda Jackson — Gavin gained his Equity card and joined newly formed Raindog theatre company founded by actors Robert Carlyle and Alexander Morton. A production of John Byrne’s Still Life proved important in two respects: it was the first time Gavin appeared on the King’s stage, and also worked with his eventual friend and mentor Gerry Kelly.
In 1996, Gavin joined the cast of BBC Scotland sketch show Pulp Video. Several sketches featured himself and Greg Hemphill as old men, which in turn inspired Greg and writing partner Ford Kiernan to create the characters of Jack and Victor. “Originally I played Winston. I was meant to be in the original stage play but, unfortunately, I was doing a children’s television series at the time — so Paul Riley was brought in. In later years I was doing other stuff, and eventually, when Still Game began, I was called upon to be Bobby the barman.” Gavin laughs: “I think its slightly in revenge: ‘We’ve become successful with Chewing the Fat. You walked away. You’re going to take abuse for ever! Your catchphrases will be shouted at you in the street until you die!’”
When Gavin speaks with The Scots Magazine, it’s just a week since the final night of the new Still Game stage show performed at the Hydro next to the SECC. “We’re still reeling a bit, to be honest,” he admits. “There’s nothing to compare it to; nobody has done a stage show to around 10,000 people a night! It was an extraordinary experience.”
If nothing else, though, it’s 16-day, 21 show run proved useful preparation for the physical hard work of a King’s panto. “You’re in a complete little bubble, doing two-to-three shows a day, each two-and-a-half hours long. It’s a real endurance test,” he says. “I would challenge most actors to give it a bash and see how they come out the other end. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and I’ve seen people broken by it.”
Gavin himself took a break in 2011, following the death of his great friend and mentor, Gerard Kelly. “The 2010 show was really strange, especially for myself and Barbara Rafferty, who was also close to Kelly,” he explains. “Kelly’s funeral was on the Friday and we were in rehearsals on the Monday. There was no time to grieve or process what was going on; we just had to get on with the show. So by the time we came out the other end, I had lots of things to consider. Did I want to fill his shoes? Did I want to go back?
“I would never deem to touch the seams of Kelly’s garments; he was just incredible, and his are shoes which will never be filled. When I took over from Kelly, that was more of a tribute and a thank you from me to him. But Kelly had elements of Jack Milroy, and all sorts of people; panto’s a craft, a skill that gets passed on as a tradition. Nobody works in a vacuum.
“I love the King’s,” he says. “When I walk on that stage it feels like: ‘Ah yes, I know how this works.’ You know how to handle the audience. As Kelly always said, the audience is 50% of the deal at the panto; you’re there to commune. That’s the beautiful thing about it; we’re all there to have a good time and share the experience. It’s a lovely warm space for people.”
. . . . . . .
GLASGOW KING’S PANTO HALF CENTURY
It’s 50 years since Glasgow’s King’s Theatre launched its inaugural panto, A Wish for Jamie, starring Johnny Beattie, Bobby Dennis, Faye Lenore and Kenneth McKellor. Yet it wasn’t until 1967 that panto became a regular fixture — in both 1965 and 1966, the theatre hosted the (now politically incorrect) Black and White Minstrel Show!
Subsequent years saw many of Scotland’s entertainment greats tread the boards at the King’s at Christmas, including Stanley Baxter, Rikki Fulton, Jimmy Logan, and Gerard Kelly — who, with his infamous boots and fuzzy black hair, played a loveable panto rogue for 20 consecutive years until his death in 2010.
Apart from a short period when productions were shared with the King’s namesake in Edinburgh, the theatre has always hosted its own, Glasgow-flavoured shows. Over the decades there have been nine Cinderellas, nine Aladdins, seven Sleeping Beauties and six Mother Gooses — though just one Snow White!
Surprisingly, this year is the first occasion Peter Pan has landed at the King’s, with its ‘principal boy’ played, against tradition, by a man — River City favourite Scott Fletcher. However, this isn’t the first time the King’s has broken the mould; Elaine C Smith was their pantomime dame for several years!
. . . . .
Peter Pan: King’s Theatre, Glasgow; Saturday 6 December 2014 to Sunday 11 January 2015.
Tickets: www.atgtickets.com/venues/kings-theatre/
Article first published in The Scots Magazine, December 2014.
