YORKSHIRE comedian and pantomime king Billy Pearce is playing six nights at The Futurist in Scarborough this summer, but he is wondering what the future holds for traditional seaside holiday entertainment.

“It’s a different time now. I don’t know anywhere in the country that still has what you’d call a summer season,” says the Leeds comic.

“I did 16 weeks with The Osmonds about four years ago and that was the last proper summer show I did: ten shows a week. Now it’s just six or seven shows in a season in Scarborough and 16 nights on Tuesdays in Blackpool.

“But in 2000, I had John Inman, Jimmy Cricket, The Nolans, Kev Orkian and a five-piece band on the bill with me, and that’s not that long ago, but now you couldn’t afford to put that on.”

Holiday-makers prefer to go abroad on cheap packages, Billy suggests.

“It’s a different world now. Only the other day I was looking at this old video from 1983 and the camera panned round this club in Doncaster, and it’s like a time capsule,” he says.

“The ash trays are full of fags; the ladies have done their hair; the lads have got dressed up, with half a lager in their hands. You don’t see that anymore, do you? People don’t ever dress up for the theatre now.”

Billy’s entertainment for summer 2010 is a Family Laughter Show, also featuring singers Neil Hurst and Leanne Fury, magician Guy Barrett and Geoffrey Hindmarch’s dancers.

“It’s a variety show but not in the old sense; it’s modern with lots of up-to-date stuff,” he says. “I go straight on at the start with the dancers, and then I’m on and off throughout, and I work with everyone.

“We’re not a big company so that makes it look like it’s a big company! If we keep it moving, it looks busier.”

One of the changing factors is how audiences now behave, no longer steeped in end-of-the-pier traditions.

“People have shorter attention spans, and sometimes you think they’ve forgotten how to be an audience, as they’re used to sitting and watching their entertainment in their lounge, where they can walk about and pause their TV and not be part of the show,” says Billy.

“And because of all the reality shows, they all think they can perform, so all the pros are sat at home watching those reality shows. Now I just go around shutting clubs.”

The entertainment business may be changing, but Billy Pearce’s pantomime frolics draw ever bigger audiences.

“My last pantomime [Jack And The Beanstalk] took over £1.5 million in seven and a half weeks, playing to more than 100,000 people at the Bradford Alhambra,” he says proudly.

He will be back there this winter for Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, his 12th Alhambra panto in his silly Billy guise: testament to a formula that still works whereas long seaside summer runs are disappearing.

“I said to someone, you build your audience and they learn to trust you and they’ll keep coming back to the panto,” says Billy.

“With a recession on, everyone is frightened to death, but if people know they’re going to have a laugh, they will come – and bookings are up again this year.”

• Billy Pearce’s Family Laughter Show, Futurist Theatre, Scarborough, every Monday until August 30, 8pm. Box office: 01723 365789.