I would like to point out to the casual reader from elsewhere that the comments in this thread refer to a Britain of the past. A nation's sense of humour evolves rather quickly.

Britain is still very much like this, outside London.

Last I checked, pantomimes show no sign of becoming unpopular in Britain :-)

You got me looking for pantomime statistics in recent years :) Perhaps they're hard to find or perhaps I didn't try very hard, but the best I could come up with was this from 2013:

> Terri Paddock, Managing and Editorial Director of WhatsOnStage, commented: "In general, we're seeing fewer pantomimes mounted in recent years. As of today, we're listing 125 pantomimes in our nationwide database for this Christmas as compared with a peak in 1996 of 244.

https://www.whatsonstage.com/england-theatre/news/panto-stat...

My kid's primary school takes them every year (covid excepted) to a panto, and we as a family go to our local am-dram panto. Annecdotaly that village panto has half a dozen shows and is always packed.

The former is a professional show - although 125 just for professional seems low given that I know of at least 3 professional pantos within 10 miles of my house which covers a population of about 100k population

Professional UK panto income increased 30% from 2012 to 2016 with about 3 million people watching a professional one each year - about 1 in 20 people.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...