FREE CHRISTMAS COMPETITIONS, FREE PANTOMIME QUIZ QUESTIONS

1. What title is traditionally given to the central character in a pantomime who is a man dressed in a woman's clothes?
   Dame
   
   
3. In Aladdin, however, the character dealt with in question 1 is usually given a different title. Which?
   Widow
   
   
5. What pantomime dealing with a poor boy who achieves fame and fortune in London is to some extent based on fact?
   Dick Whittington (a rhyme says Lord Mayor thrice, history says four times)
   
   
7. Which group of antisocials traditionally features in the tale of Ali Baba?
   The 40 Thieves
   
   
9. What is the traditional title given to the central character in a pantomime who equally traditionally - less so nowadays perhaps - is a young female playing a male role?
   Principal Boy
   
   
11. It being in the nature of panto to delve into psycho-horror, what character is threatened by a predator disguised as her grandmother?
    Red Riding Hood
    
    
13. Still with psycho-horror, what character demands a poor girl's first born child as the reward for turning straw into gold and so helping her to the throne (a reasonable enough deal, some might say)?
    Rumpelstiltskin
    
    
15. When the brothers Grimm first came across this tale, the villain was the heroine's mother. In a move the Daily Mail would no doubt have denounced as 'political correctness gone mad', the brothers made her instead the heroine's step-mother, presumably out of consideration for the feelings of children - if not of step-mothers. The villain makes several attempts to kill the heroine using a poisoned comb, attempted asphyxiation and a poisoned apple - this after having a huntsman take the child into the forest to be killed, demanding sight of the lungs and liver as proof. Who in English is the heroine?
    Snow White
    
    
17. In respect of which pantomime story is the long-running debate over 'glass' or 'squirrel fur' now widely considered to be a red herring - not least as the writer said to have written vair (squirrel fur) actually writes three times verre (glass)?
    Cinderella - and glass does make more of a test when trying the footwear on for size
    
    
19. The Aladdin story as told in panto is usually very close indeed to the version told in 1001 Arabian Nights - so it's safe to ask the name of the wizard who masquerades as Aladdin's lost uncle.
    Abanazar
    
    
21. Which classical and film actor, who has in later life taken panto Dame into his repertoire, made his first panto appearance in Ipswich in 1962 as TeeVee in Aladdin?
    Sir Ian McKellen