FORGET Brexit. There’s a much more painful parting on the way. York’s “grand old dame” of panto, Berwick Kaler, is calling it a day. Once this year’s panto is out of the way, he will be hanging up his dame’s wig and corset for good.

Oh, no, he can’t be!

Oh, yes, he is.

No-one can accuse Berwick of being a quitter. For more than 40 years (with just two years missed in all that time) he has bestrode the Theatre Royal stage each Christmas as the campest, quirkiest and most charismatic of dames imaginable.

His catchphrases - “me babbies, me bairns”; “I’m humiliated!” (invariably said with a broad Sunderland accent); and “Same old rubbish!” - have become the stuff of legend. As have his madcap mini films, often shot in the streets of York, which make up such an important part of his pantos.

Because make no doubt about it - Berwick has built up a brilliant team of actors around him (Martin Barrass, Suzy Cooper and David Leonard principal among them) but these are his pantos. He writes and co-directs them. They’re always seat-of-the-pants affairs, the scripts completed at the very last moment, Berwick always horribly anxious that he won’t be able to pull it off this time. And yet, year after year, he has. He’s become one of the great panto dames.

He will be hugely missed: panto in York will never be quite the same without him.

So enjoy this year’s panto while you can. It is called, appropriately enough, The Grand Old Dame of York. Berwick’s been that, and much more. Let’s give him a great send-off.