Fascinating Aida have re-united for their farewell tour but is One Last Flutter truly the end for the sequinned sirens with the barbed wit? Will Monday's show be their last appearance at York Theatre Royal after more than 20 years of bittersweet cabaret?

"It is the final curtain for Fascinating Aida, as we know it, Jim," says founder member Marilyn Cutts. "Dillie Keane and Adele Anderson have been talking about the idea - and it is only an idea at the moment - that we would still write together.

"But in this present format, yes, it is all over. It's absolutely knackering; we're all over 50 now, and this show took 18 months to put together to tour - I was spared the first 13 months as I was doing Beauty And The Beast - and when you're writing, you're not making any money."

Touring does not fill her with the joys of autumn either. "When you're over 50, carrying all your suitcases twice a day, driving up and down the motorways..." The sentence faded away, as if enervated by the very thought.

How many dates are Fascinating Aida undertaking on One Last Flutter?

"We're doing too many to count," says Marilyn. "We must have done at least 39 separate venues so far, most of them for one night, though we did have three weeks in Edinburgh for the festival, and that was blissful. That was only an hour's show each day and we could stay in one place!"

The tour began in June and runs until November 4, in Jersey, but that is not the end.

One Last Flutter will keep on fluttering: six weeks in the West End at the Comedy Theatre, then a mopping-up of the theatres and cities that have missed out this autumn, followed by a New York run next April and May. "To quote that wonderful film with Geena Davis and Samuel L Jackson The Long Kiss Goodnight, it is a long farewell!" says Marilyn.

Longer still if the trio decides to work together again in a different brand of show. "There is a limited appeal to cabaret but if you do music in a play it opens up bigger possibilities to do other things beyond the three of us just getting on stage and singing ," Marilyn says.

"It would be interesting to do other projects together, just as Dillie and I did with some friends, when we put on a show called Slice Of Life before Adele joined us and we became Fascinating Aida."

Do not, however, assume that the trio's enjoyment of Fascinating Aida has diminished. The lure of posh frocks and the chance to sharpen their satirical knives on fresh targets still appeals.

"Dillie has said that each number we write reflects the age we're in and the age we are at. Well, we're all over 50 now and life over 50 for a woman is very different to life at 30, and the world in the Noughties is very different to the way it was in the 1980s," says Marilyn.

They continue to sing of love and sex, "something the girls claim to have much experience of", as the tour press release puts it. Anything Sex In The City can do, Fascinating Aida has already been there, done that. "I don't really feel qualified to talk about that comparison as I work in the evenings, so I haven't seen it but I did watch about half a programme and I thought 'Oh, yes, shoes'," says Marilyn.

She prefers instead to reflect on Fascinating Aida's own achievements in commenting on matters of women and sex. "When we started, women comedians were still somewhat of a rarity, and the reason we've been successful is that we're true to ourselves. The things that made us laugh round the table we then shared with the audience and we still do.

"I guess Sex In The City is reacting to the situation of working women with careers in certain environments, which we were doing too, but the only difference is that we're not wearing expensive frocks on glossy sets - though my new frocks designed by David Fielden are pretty gorgeous!"

There is still too a competitive frisson to Fascinating Aida.

"We don't just do 'funny' in our show," Marilyn says. "As with Shakespeare, you have the tragic, the comical, the historical and the pastoral, and we bring them all together; we do it all from suits to nuts, which is much more satisfying than just getting up there and being ironic and witty."

Fascinating Aida, with pianist Russell Churney, present One Last Flutter at York Theatre Royal, October 13, 7.30pm. Tickets: £13.50 to £17.50 on 01904 623568.

Updated: 12:57 Friday, October 10, 2003