'Wearing high heels is outside my comfort zone'

"It's been an absolute hoot."

TV vet Steve Leonard, who may be more familiar to TV viewers for the BBC shows Vet School and Vets in Practice, is juggling opening a new vets practice with a very different role - being a panto dame.

The 53-year-old will take the starring role in a local amateur pantomime in Cheshire and said he had no regrets about agreeing to it.

Launching the new business in Nantwich was "terrifying and really exciting in equal measure," he explained, so the pantomime had been a "godsend" as it had given him something different to focus on.

He will be the dame in Audlem Theatre Company's production of Jack and the Beanstalk alongside his daughter.

Leonard said he had always been interested in the theatre, previously performing in a "risque adult panto" as a final year vet student, he said.

But wearing heels for the first time as Nanny Tess Tickle had taken him out of his comfort zone.

"When you see me tottering like Bambi, you'll realise this is not a seasoned heel wearer," he joked.

But he claimed performing in a pantomime was not that radically different to his day job, as it was all about communication.

"Vets make really good communicators normally because they're having to convey information to people, they are having to read people, and see where they are at emotionally," he said.

Being on stage was also an "amazing licence to misbehave," he added.

"I'm playing the dame. I can do what I like."

Jack and the Beanstalk at Audlem Public Hall opens on Wednesday and runs until 31 January.

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