Katherine MacAlister talks to local actress Dillie Keane about the hard price she paid for fame

If you haven’t seen Fascinating Aida, or even know what it’s all about, then just watch the comedy trio singing Down Wiv Da Kids on You Tube. In fact, I challenge you not to howl with laughter at Dillie Keane’s crotch grabbing dance moves, because you’ll immediately understand why Fascinating Aida has such a cult following.

It’s a cross between cabaret, variety and comedy and its success has even surprised founder Dillie Keane.

And with sell-out performances all over the UK and the West End, Fascinating Aida is on a roll. “I do occasionally yearn for Chekhov when grabbing my crotch on stage,” the Olivier Award-nominated actress acknowledges, “although my pension matured recently and when it arrived I rang my financial advisor and we both laughed and laughed. But luckily the diary is so full, I know what I’m doing until May.”

Created in 1983, this is Fascinating Aida’s 25th anniversary tour, and its revival is, if anything, more successful than the original. “We always promised a 25th anniversary show which I approached with trepidation but everyone agreed to do it and we sat down to write some new songs, and they were really good luckily,” Dillie explains.

Title tracks like Cheap Flights, Dogging and Down Wiv Da Kids give you a good idea what the show entails, but how do the girls know if they’ve hit comedy gold? “If the songs make us laugh it’s 90 per cent there. And anyway, music isn’t like jokes, if you don’t like the first one, another one will come along in a minute that will be completely different.”

The formula obviously works, and with sell out performances around the country, Dillie must relish the applause more than most, considering how hard she fought to get on stage, her parents bitterly opposing their daughter’s aspirations to be an actress.

“I don’t know where I got the acting bug from because I’m not confident, but put on a hat and coat and I can be someone else which is so much nicer. But when I asked my parents if I could go to drama school they said it simply wasn’t going to happen.”

Instead, as a compromise, Dillie went off to Trinity College, Dublin, to study music, but spent so much time putting on plays, she burnt herself out. “I was in everything and acted in everything, two or three plays a term, and then was so exhausted I had to go to hospital because I burnt out and was very ill. It meant I missed my third year exams, and you couldn’t resit them in those days, so I had to limp off home to irate parents who felt that my three years at university had been wasted, and sent me on a secretarial course, hoping I might settle down.”

Instead, Dillie auditioned for LAMDA (The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) and when she was accepted had to break the news to her parents: “It’s what I’d wanted to do since I was 12 years old, but they said they wouldn’t give me any money. So I wrote to everyone I could think of, hundreds of letters, and eventually got a sponsor, a famous businessman who paid my tuition fees. “And when my parents heard they coughed up for my living expenses, because he was a hero in our capitalist household. Looking back it was the best thing I ever did. Wonderful years. I was incredibly happy.”

What a story! “I know, but I have done lots of things since then and been busy all my life which is great,” she says from her Oxfordshire home, where she lives with John O’Neill, a steeplechase trainer and Master of Bicester Hunt.

“And now here I am rushing about on stage like an old goat and feeling like a silly old bat,” she laughs. “But there’s no doubt this is my vocation. Because while music is a vehicle for me, it’s always been more about the song. Songs sustain me and lyrics are the closest I get to praying.”

  • Fascinating Aida is on tonight at Oxford’s New Theatre.
  • Call the box office on 0844 8713020 or see atgtickets.com/oxford