THEATRE Royal chief executive Philip Bernays launched this year’s panto, Sleeping Beauty, with his customary boast – but tinged with a note of concern.

It has been the fastest-selling panto in the country – 55,000 tickets snapped up so far, a 6% increase on last year – and will be one of the longest-running, with about 90 performances. But what about the new carpets and fittings in the expensively restored auditorium, which doesn’t even open to the public until later this month?

Was he worried? “I am a bit,” he confessed.

Over the past seven years, regular panto stars Clive Webb and Danny Adams have proved adept at messing up the stage with water and shaving foam.

But Mr Bernays’ tongue was probably in his cheek. The Blackpool-based father-and-son team have been the mainstay of a panto which repeatedly breaks records.

North East-born producer Michael Harrison said: “The Newcastle panto is legendary.

“Others in the business say, ‘How can this panto play to more than 80,000 people with no star recognised outside the North East – with no one from Big Brother or a cookery programme or someone who gives your house a makeover?’

“What we’ve done over the last seven years is create our own repertory team.”

It has been seven years for Clive and Danny and five years for Chris (Hayward, Tyneside-based panto dame who makes all his own garish costumes). “It is a traditional panto but there will always be some sort of device, something extra.”

Last year, it was a stupendous flying dragon. Yesterday, its creators, twins Paul and Gary Hardy-Brown, explained how they planned to top that this year with two major wow moments.

The pair, introduced by Michael as “the world’s only identical twin illusionists”, wowed journalists with a trick involving a bowling ball.

They then gave a few tantalising details of a planned effect to trump Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and something else which they promised would be “huge and very hairy and scary”.

Danny Adams, whose slapstick skills and silly laugh have made him a Tyneside idol, said he and his dad hadn’t been tempted to go elsewhere for a change.

“I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. This is like coming home now.”

Philip Bernays said: “It is a team effort. Everyone in the building has a sense of ownership of the panto. It really is something special.”

Having had its run extended by a week, Sleeping Beauty will open on November 29 and run until January 21, 2012.