EACH week fashion expert Simon Donohue turns his eye to a different aspect of men's sartorial style... this week he turns his attentions to the pantomime dame, and how to best to respond when you are the butt of the joke...

D is for a Dame

I COULD tell the dame was interested as soon as our eyes connected across the customarily crowded room.

I tried looking at the floor, checking the back of my hands for lines which I perhaps hadn't noticed in all of my 35 years, but to no avail.

Within minutes she'd made the approach I'd been dreading.

There was an air of Doberman dressed up as puppy about her.

Her hair was halfway between Tina Turner and Russell Brand, her eyes daubed with sufficient make-up to make Ronald McDonald wince.

I'm not sure who'd made her breasts more voluminous but it appears that they'd used old socks rather than silicon.

Awkward

I'd say that she and the depilatory cream spent even less time together than Jade Goody and William Shakespeare.

I hoped that shrinking down behind my two-year-old son might mean that she'd move on to another victim.

Yet even the clear evidence that I was a happily cohabiting man, with at least one offspring to my name (two of them in actuality), didn't seem to put her off.

"What's your name?" she said, flirtatiously realigning her ample bosom just inches from my face.

I didn't want to be rude. There were too many women and children present for that.

"Errr, it's Simon," I proffered, aware that beads of perspiration were already forming on the top of my head.

"Ohh, Simon," my buxom seductress replied. "Tonight you've got a little part in my life. And it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger!"

Enduring love

It was going to be a long night. For fully two hours, she flirted and cavorted as I cringed. It got worse.

If constantly reminding me of her overpowering presence wasn't enough, she insisted that I help her to get something off her chest.

The issue in question was a bright green water pistol, nestling halfway between someone else's bra and a worryingly hairy upper torso.

But what does this have to do with Style, you're asking.

Well, it seems the ritual humiliation of an unwitting pantomime punter will never go out of fashion.

Advice

Do I have some advice for ordinary blokes now that the experience is behind me?

Oh yes I do. Not all women who describe themselves as dames have been nominated for an Oscar.

And Grizelda had absolutely nothing in common with Helen Mirren.

The next time you agree to attend a post-Christmas showing of am/dram Cinderella at the local church hall, make sure that you're sitting somewhere near the back.

Yes, there really is nothing like a pantomime dame.

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