According to Joan Collins it was her close friend and pantomime veteran Christoper Biggins who talked her into making her pantomime debut in Dick Whittington playing Queen Rat at the Birmingham Hippodrome in 2010. Joan made her first panto appearance alongside lifelong fan Julian Clary and actor Nigel Havers aswell as the late Keith Harris and panto dame Jeffrey Holland. Joan is most famous for playing superbad Alexis in Dynasty, back in the outrageous eighties. She injected that Alexis attitude into her new role. “As Queen Rat, I am an absolute monster,” she said. “It’s a part that I know how to play very well. Panto is about being much larger than life, and I’ve no trouble with that at all. I come from a theatrical family,

with a long history of performers. My father and grandfather were theatrical agents and entrepreneurs.  My aunts Lalla and Pauline were musical comedy actresses. My grandmother was a soubrette — a singer and dancer — who toured South Africa in the early 20th century alongside her two sisters as the Three Cape Girls. I never saw Grandma in panto, but she did regale me with

stories of her successes in Britain as principal boy.