Christmas Special 2025: What is Panto?

Merry Christmas from everyone at The Comedy Bureau! To celebrate the season of rest and love we are bringing you a very special episode recorded away from the famous offices of The Comedy Bureau. We went on a wonderful nerdy day out to The University of Kent, specifically to The Special Collections, to look at their incredible archives.As it is Christmas, we thought what better subject than Pantomime! Joining us for the episode, as The Comedy Bureau’s first ever guest is Ben Roddy. Ben is an acclaimed actor, who has appeared in shows like Call The Midwife and films such as Absolutely Fabulous The Movie. However he's best known for his theatre performances. The reason we so badly wanted him to be included in our festive edition is that Ben is also a brilliant panto dame. He has been the resident dame at The Marlowe Theatre’s panto since… well, watch the episode and Olly will tell you!You can find Ben on instagram at @BenRoddyActor, and he's represented by Nancy Hudson Associates.In this episode we discuss the history, origins and development of pantomime. We also chat about the current state of panto - how financially important it is for most theatres and how it has changed over time with cultural developments.We are truly grateful to the team at The Special Collections archive, especially Karen Brayshaw, for retrieving so many fascinating items for us to look at.We will be back in 2026 with Series 2 - thank you for listening or watching so far. Please do like, subscribe and give us a good rating to help us grow. We really appreciate your support.The Dave Lee mentioned at the beginning of the episode but not elaborated on is the comedian and actor Dave Lee (MBE) who performed in pantomimes in Kent for a large stretch of his career as well as appearing on television.Ben mentions the Dame of Elaine C Smith, and he and Karen were absolutely right - Elaine is appearing in The Little Mermaid at The King’s Theatre, Glasgow from 22nd November 2025 to 4th January 2026.Laura briefly mentions the Alternative Comedy Memorial Society in passing, if that name tickles your fancy and you want to learn more then check them out here: https://noblefailure.org/Here are some links to both The Stand Up Comedy Archive and the David Drummond Pantomime Collection - both housed at The University of Kent and available for viewing by the general public.https://www.kent.ac.uk/library/special-collections/british-stand-up-comedy-archivehttps://www.kent.ac.uk/library/special-collections/theatre-and-performance-collections/david-drummond-pantomime-collectionThis episode was edited by Lucas Orme. The music (including festive jingle bells) was by Oliver Double.