‘I DO like dressing up as a lady at Christmas,” announces Francis Tucker, aka Dottie Dolittle, in this year’s Everyman rock ’n’ roll panto.

“And at other times,” interjects Adam Keast, who plays the Fitzwarren brothers in Dick Whittington.

They are taking a break from running their lines in the theatre’s rehearsal space, but their banter sounds as if they are still in the middle of a performance.

“I always wear men’s shoes,” says the dame, holding up a pointy pair in black.

“Whereas I’m wearing women’s shoes this time because I couldn’t find any men’s ones that were silly enough,” interrupts Keast.

His costume for the show is, he adds, like Willie Wonka but weirder and includes “the most enormous wig ever seen on a Liverpool stage.”

To go with Tucker’s size nines is what he calls “Hattie Jacques style”.

This will be his seventh Everyman pantomime and Keast’s eleventh, yet neither of them were particularly fans of the tradition as children.

“I was working in Birmingham and I had a friend who was doing the rock ’n’ roll panto here,” says Tucker.

“When I came to see it, I immediately thought ‘I want to be in that show’.”

As fans of the annual Everyman show will know, the actors split their time between performing scenes and providing the soundtrack from a bandstand at the back of the stage.

This gives the theatre its own spin on traditional panto – a winning formula that makes audiences return year after year.

Dick Whittington comes from the same team, and is written by Sarah Nixon and Mark Chatterton, who has been directing the shows for eight years.

Keeping their performances fresh, even after so many years, is easy for the cast.