By Rupert Bean - Co Founder Back End Productions

If someone had said to me back in 1998, when we were just about to embark on our first show, Dick Whittington, that nine years later I would still be writing innuendo-laden panto scripts, prancing about in tights and pretending to be still in my mid-twenties, I would have thrown a custard pie in their face. And yet here I am, presenting the 11th Back End Productions pantomime, with more gusto than you can possibly imagine.

From the very beginning, when I found myself begging people I had never even met to be in the cast, to the later years when our popularity meant I had to hold auditions (sitting in my house reading scripts and drinking wine), the Back End ride has always been interesting and with the odd exception, a hell of a lot of fun! And when I look back and see what we’ve achieved in those years, I cannot help but be exceptionally proud. We have dedicated a section of this programme to a history of Back End Productions from 1998 to the present day (I sound like a history teacher now!)…I am sure you’ll find it interesting.

My main thanks go to the three other Back Enders who have shared this show with me – my Back End co-founder Gavin MacKay, his fellow producer Jake McQuitty (with whom I have acted since we were 13) and of the star of our show, the talented Miss Jinty Cotton, who can light up a stage even in a black out. Truly three very wonderful people, whom I am blessed to call my friends.

Highlights from the Back End History Book!

There have been many. The boys from Imag turning up to a school hall in Parsons Green with more lighting rig than we’d ever seen for Dick in 1998, saving our derrieres; building the Death Star out of sheet steel for Snow White and the Seven ‘Droids; the hour long power cut that year – when the audience gathered round the old grand piano in the hall and we partied and sang till the power came back on; having to re-install the power supply from the national grid to the school stage (the school now has 185 Amps to the stage!!) to avoid a repeat; borrowing the lighting desk from the Millennium Dome to cope with all the kit we “borrowed” from the Rolling Stones in 2002; the relief of getting a show up at all in the Pavilion in 2005 (four floors up, 17.5 tons of kit and no lift, and carpeting the auditorium at four in the morning before the opening night); Jake’s “Rebel Yell” in Aladdin and standing at the back of the auditorium with the audience going wild.

Back End Facts

• Following the 2004 show, Aladdin on the Jolly Roger, Back End Productions funded a place for a child from the Hurlingham & Chelsea School to attend the Central School of Speech and Drama.

• Jinty once tried to recruit the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to take part in the panto. He declined, although did offer his wife for panto dame duties...

• For the 2005 show, Puss ‘n’ Bats, the Vampettes were given pole-dancing lessons.

• In 2006 we went global, with our own “fly on the wall” correspondent visiting from Japan who prepared
a special feature on us in “UK Jack” (a tabloid paper in Japan)

• Two couples have actually met through their involvement in Back End Productions and got married; one of these couples the writer and co-founder Rupert Bean has had two panto babies.

• In 2000 we nearly booked The Savoy Theatre on the Strand, but instead we picked Riverside Studios. How we would love to have taken a show to the West End just once!

• In 2004, Fergus Graham was spotted by a model scout from Boden and invited him to model for the Spring/Summer range

• The car used in the poster for 2002’s show, Babes in the Hood, was a genuine Rolls Royce Silver Ghost which was parked under a railway arch in Shoredith for the shoot. Another form of shooting took place not too far from the arch on the same evening...none of the cast were hurt...

• On the opening night of Babes, we blew the entire SW6 power grid.

• The script for the 2003 show, Jack and the Bondstalk, was written in Mauritius

• The car used in the photoshoot for the same show was an Austin Martin DB5

• After one late night rehearsal the Producer lost his car in Fulham and it took him 2 days to find

• Alcohol units consumed by the audience since 1998: approx 210,000

• Average number of people playing back end of panto horse each year: 1.75

• Carpet used for audience seating in Puss ‘n’ Bats: 1,000 metres

• Cushions used for audience seating in Puss ‘n’ Bats: 2,000 (before they were thrown)

• Number of times Simon Cowell stopped his Rolls to ask for a flyer: 1 (2007)

• Only cast member to have simulated a lewd act with Neil Hamilton on stage: Jinty Cotton

• Only cast member to have simulated a lewd act with Orinoco the Womble: Jinty again!

• Only 4 members of cast have been in all 10 shows: Gavin MacKay, Rupert Bean, Jake McQuitty and Jinty Cotton (combined aged 138)

• Number of charities supported since 1998: 18

• Average amount raised each year for charity: £22,222

• Total audience since 1998: approx 25,000

• Average audience per performance (not including the matinee): 511

• Song and dance routines performed since 1998: 139

• Average song and dance routines per show: 13.9