Port Sunlight Players’ panto author Julia Whitehead featured on this Sunday’s Songs of Praise

Nov 25 2009 by Lorna Hughes, Birkenhead News

THE Port Sunlight Players and their traditional Christmas pantomime will be featured in this Sunday’s Songs of Praise.

The BBC1 programme, which was filmed at Christchurch in Port Sunlight, includes an interview with panto author and director Julia Whitehead, who has been writing pantomime scripts for the Players for over 20 years.

She follows in the footsteps of the second Lord Leverhulme, who wrote pantomimes in the 1920s.

He formed the Port Sunlight Players in 1924 from workers in the Port Sunlight Soap factory for the purpose of performing his pantomimes each Christmas.

This year the Players will be performing her version of Humpty Dumpty.

Julia, 71, performed all over the world as a dancer with the Tiller Girls before joining Birkenhead Operatic Society on her return to Wirral.

She said: “In 1964 I met someone who told me they were doing a revue in Port Sunlight and asked me if I wanted to do the choreography.

“The Secretary asked me if I was going to do the dance for the pantomime, which was the Wizard of Oz, and I’ve been involved ever since.

“I thought I could probably do just as well so I started writing pantomimes and the first one was Robin Hood, because I’m interested in medieval history.”