Babbies In The Wood, York Theatre Royal, until February 1

After such roles as Dr Evilstein, Rockula and The Dreaded Lurgi, the dashing, dastardly dandy is strutting the boards as the Sheriff of Rottingham in Babbies In The Woods from this week.

David may leave his pantomime rogue out of his Theatre Royal credits in his programme profiles elsewhere - Man of The Moment, The Way Of The World, Private Lives, The War Of The Roses and The Elephant Man are mentioned instead - but he has made the tyrannical luvvie role wholly his own.

Yet he remembers his initial shock when first offered the part in 1984. "It was a big surprise to me," says David. "The director, Andrew McKinnon, had directed me in Doctor Faustus and West Side Story at the Nottingham Playhouse, where I played Bernardo, the leader of The Sharks.

"Berwick Kaler was looking for a new son and villain for the York panto, and although Berwick hadn't seen us, Andrew cast Martin Barrass and me."

Barrass and Leonard have since become as much a fixture as dame Kaler in the Theatre Royal pantomime. Yet they could not have foreseen such longevity on their first day of rehearsals for Sinbad The Sailor: their first encounter with Berwick. "I'd only ever seen this grimacing cut-out of him when I was doing Jesus Christ Superstar at York and I'd asked 'Who the hell is that?'.

"When Martin and I turned up at the Lendal rehearsal studios - we were staying in the same digs at £17 a week - we stood shivering together and in walked this man in a white cap who just nodded at us and we thought 'Oh, God, he'll be wanting to see what we're like before giving his seal of approval'."

There were no clues in the script as to how they should play their roles. "Warlock seemed pretty much a straight villain on the page, and Martin was just told he was the dame's son," David recalls.

"Anyway, Martin started laughing at me doing this villainous character. I'd seen Donald Sinden doing his series on English churches, and I was a big fan of Carry On and Kenneth Williams in particular, and I hadn't really thought about it until I'd done a few lines when Andrew McKinnon suddenly said 'My God, that's a cross between Donald Sinden and Kenneth Williams'!

"So there I was doing this somewhat camp, manic villain, and at the end of the day Berwick came up and said 'Quite good, quite good, I'll do you a few re-writes'."

Before donning his rudimentary Virginia Woolf wig and big boots with the bright laces, Kaler had played the baddie rather than the dame in panto. "I remember him telling me that the villain should not frighten children: they must feel they can have a go at him and laugh at his arrogance and pomposity and mock him when he makes mistakes," David says.

The villain may be rotten, but he is a peach of a role to play.

"Villains should have delusions of grandeur; they want to take over the world; they think they're beautiful; they're vain and they reckon they're sex gods - so that's why Berwick once gave me an Elvis number to sing, and the part has grown over the years.

"After the first year, when Berwick knew I was coming back, he said he thought I could take it further and could make it wackier. So he created Dr Evilstein and made the villain more like the Rocky Horror Show with the rubber gloves!"

With his hip-swivelling dance moves, his slim, tall figure and his black-is-always-the-new-black wardrobe, Leonard's villain has his fluttering flotilla of female admirers. "I don't think I'm sexy at all: when you do this panto thing it's the villain who thinks he's sexy, not David Leonard, because as soon as you do that, the response is 'Oh, please'.

"Not that I'm comparing myself with Robbie Williams but it's about sending yourself up, just as he does, because pantomime is the strumpet of the arts: everything is sent up," he says.

Asked to choose his favourite villain from his 15 York pantos, he picks Rockula in Sleeping Beauty in 1994-1995. "That was the one where I had to play a woman, in drag, in the first half, the Fifties' Elvis Rockula in the second, and he had to turn himself into his servant for a while as well!" he says. "I think that was one of Berwick's best pantos, although I'd pick Old Mother Milly as the best because it was completely original."

At 45, David's enthusiasm for the Theatre Royal pantomime remains undimmed, even if his children, Laurie, 16, and Hermione, 12, beg him not to dance on stage because they feel embarrassed watching him: "Last year, Laurie hid his head behind his programme, saying please don't shake your hips!" Typical teenage son.

Undaunted, the hips will be on the move again.

"We know it's only pantomime for God's sake, but it's taken seriously in York; the humour is special to York, and the show seems to make Christmas in this city," David says. "I don't think there's anywhere else like it, where the dame has been there for so long, so have Martin and I, and Suzy Cooper is coming up to ten years - and Berwick is paid back for his loyalty by the city's love of this panto."

Next year will be Kaler's 25th Theatre Royal pantomime and David has every intention of joining in the silver jubilee celebrations: "I think he's going to do one of his more wacky shows, like Sleeping Beauty or Old Mother Milly, so there should be a few surprises next year, which will be fun for us all!"

Babbies In The Wood, York Theatre Royal, until February 1. Tickets: £7 to £18.50. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 12:39 Friday, December 13, 2002