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My Profile Holiday Gift Guide Gift ideas & reviews for this holiday season Start Browsing You are here: Home > News > Entertainment > Article Home Business & Finance News U.S. Politics International Technology Entertainment Film Music People Television Arts Industry Sports Lifestyle Oddly Enough Environment Health Science Special Coverage Video Pictures The Great Debate Blogs Weather Reader Feedback Do More With Reuters RSS Widgets Mobile Podcasts Newsletters You Witness News Make Reuters My Homepage Partner Services CareerBuilder Affiliate Network Professional Products Support (Customer Zone) Reuters Media Financial Products About Thomson Reuters Some Britons greet slowdown with a custard pie Thu Dec 18, 2008 7:21pm EST Email | Print | Share | Reprints | Single Page [-] Text [+] By Barbara Lewis LONDON (Reuters) - Nick Thomas says this will be his third recession, and seems almost to be looking forward to it. The founder and chairman of an entertainment business might appear to be in a vulnerable sector. But his company is the world's largest producer of pantomime, a tradition as eccentrically British as a knobbly knees contest. If QDos Entertainment Plc is any guide, the pantomime business is booming. The privately held firm expects group sales to jump 65 percent this year to 51 million pounds ($79 million), about one-third of that coming from pantomime sales, for which advance bookings are up six percent year-on-year. "It's a bit like selling turkey," said Thomas, who set up QDos' predecessor in 1986. Academics agree escapist entertainment takes on greater significance for people who are worried about the future. Irreverently based on children's fairy tales like Cinderella, Aladdin, Jack and the Beanstalk and Sleeping Beauty, pantomime is theater rooted in the 16th-century traveling street entertainment from Italy, Commedia dell' Arte. Perhaps because of its gaudy, bawdy mix of slapstick, cross-dressing and very bad jokes it has not made much of an impression overseas. But theatres from Aberdeen to Bognor, and Llandudno to Woking depend on it for a sizeable chunk of income. "You could say that panto is keeping some theatres afloat really," said Dennis Willis, an amateur enthusiast, whose wife Jackie runs an online business selling scripts. He also said demand is holding up well. Pantomime has not drawn great audiences in the United States, although Willis has sold scripts there as well as Canada, Kuala Lumpur, Qatar, Hawaii, China and France. But in Britain it has played a leading role at Christmas since Victorian times -- for the majority of theatres the annual "panto" is often the highest earner, and subsidizes more adventurous pieces. "We come if we're in England ... but I also go to a lot of pantomimes at my own theater in Spain," said audience member Marie Legg, who lives in Spain, at "Dick Whittington and the Pi-rats of the Caribbean" at the Mercury Theater, Colchester. QDos's Thomas, whose company is staging 21 pantomimes throughout the British provinces, believes its escapist characteristics and its appeal across generations and classes make it resilient. "It's multi-generational," he said. "But you've got to be careful with your pricing. It's relatively cheap." A ticket to the pantomime typically costs between 10 and 15 pounds, which given sterling's recent slump could seem a steal to any visitor from the euro zone. SHOUTING BACK However, even a visitor fluent in English may not be able to make head or tail of pantomime proceedings. Continued... 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