The crowd pleaser

Panto isn't every young actor's idea of a hot role. Then again, it's not every day you get the chance to have Sir Ian McKellen playing your mum or to perform in a theatre run by Kevin Spacey.

Scottish actor Joe McFadden has the added bonus of actually really liking panto. 'It's such an exciting thing to do,' he enthuses. 'People love it. It's great to be in something that is absolutely geared to pleasing the audience.'

At the age of 29, Glaswegian McFadden knows a bit about the old 'it's behind you' malarkey. For several years he was a bit of a regular on the boards at Christmas. 'Scotland has a fabulous panto tradition,' he says. 'It's great to come from that background and to have worked with veteran Scottish variety performers Johnny Beattie and Dean Park.

'Scotland is very unashamed when it comes to panto. The Krankies are still going strong, for one thing. Down here you tend to get a bit embarrassed about it, disguise it as something a bit more arty.'

True. London theatres go into overdrive to present their Christmas shows as an alternative to pantomime, which is why Spacey's decision to do an all-out traditional Aladdin for his second show as the Old Vic's artistic director is all the more intriguing.

He's assembled an impressive team, too - Maureen Lipman as well as McKellen, and director Sean Mathias. What's his thinking? 'Panto is great for getting people into theatres who might never normally go,' says McFadden. 'This is a very grass roots version too, with great London appeal.'

Leave aside quibbles about Spacey's unnecessary campaign to get bums on seats - McFadden is ideal for Aladdin since he understands its popularist raison d'etre.

He started acting at the age of 12 in a three-part Taggart series, then joined Scottish soap High Road, following it with a critically acclaimed performance in the television adaptation of The Crow Road. Since moving to London, he has been quietly working away on film, TV, Scottish stage and in West End musical Rent, with his most recent work being TV documentary Raphael and the adaptation of Peter Ackroyd's London.

Having learned his craft on the job, he has none of the pretensions of a stage school actor. 'I act because I have no skills to do anything else,' he says. 'I met a girl at a party the other day who was a brain surgeon.

I was embarrassed to tell her that I was only an actor, but she said that brain surgeons needed actors to provide them with escapism. What I do does not change the Earth, but I do hope it has a small effect on people, takes them out of themselves for a little while.'