Please mind the dragon, I was urged. I was grateful for the warning, even though the slinky green creature, which comes complete with a crimson mouth and the brightest of white teeth, was a bit difficult to miss. By chance, the dragon is resting on a piece of floor that is familiar with bright colours — a printing press sat there until recently, turning out brochures and book covers in all the colours of the rainbow.

But now this former pressroom on the Osney Mead industrial estate has been transformed into a rehearsal studio for this year’s Oxford Playhouse pantomime, Sleeping Beauty.

I was there to meet this year’s Playhouse panto dame, Stephen Aintree — a most appropriate name, for Stephen is a Scouser through and through. He was wearing a T-shirt bearing the Liverpool FC logo. Was there, I asked, ever a tug of war between acting, and becoming a professional footballer?

“There was, for about five minutes. That was until I grew up to be the princely height of 5 foot 4 inches. I used to put in my programme biography, ‘I became an actor after realising that Liverpool FC was never going to offer me the left back and captaincy job I so earnestly desired’. Being left-footed, they don’t know what they’ve missed!” It was in Liverpool that Stephen was taken to his first panto, in the early sixties.

“I remember Bruce Forsyth was in it, and I remember not being that enamoured. I thought, ‘what’s that all about?’. But I was, of course, quite young at the time. The next time I was involved with pantomime was when I was in one — there was a small gap between the two occasions, of about 40 years!”

Even if that first panto visit didn’t immediately inspire Stephen’s future career, there were some early signs that he was destined to go on the stage.

“I was always a child show-off. I would stand on tables and sing songs — if I was in the mood, and whether anyone wanted me to, or not. I also wrote a play when I was at primary school, and people put it on. So I obviously always liked the theatre. Also, my family watched an awful lot of television when I was growing up as well.”

So did Stephen’s family encourage him, hoping that one day they would see him on the telly? “And so be able to keep them in the style to which they were accustomed?” Stephen laughed. “No, seriously, they were just happy for me to do whatever I wanted to do. But actually I grew away from acting to start with. I did a bit at my secondary school, and, at 21, I was in an amateur dramatic group.

Then, I didn’t do anything at all until I was 28. I became a librarian, and a stock control clerk — I ended up working in the Ministry of Defence, until I left to do a degree course in drama and history. I was seeing a lot of theatre by then, and I’d got to the point where I thought, ‘if I don’t try this, I’ll always regret it’.”

A long and varied list of theatre and TV credits followed — but no appearances in panto. But finally someone pictured Stephen in gorgeous frock, outrageous wig, and, as he puts it, “80 tons of make-up”.

“I love television, but I also love live theatre, because in the theatre it’s a different show every night — you say the same lines every night, but they come out differently because the audience reacts differently. And in panto, you don’t necessarily even say the same lines every night, because you’re playing with the audience, they’re part of the panto. It’s a great feeling!” In the Playhouse Sleeping Beauty, the dame goes under the exotic name of Rosalinda della Tinkle, or Aunty Rose for short.

“The good fairy has become the dame,” Stephen explained. “She’s been transmuted into this earthly creature. She protects the princess, as a sort of nanny. As for what I’m going to look like, we went to Debenhams last Saturday, with me in my full costume. Afterwards, I changed and went back into the shop and spoke to two different people, who I’d already met. I had to tell them who I was, because they didn’t recognise me as that ‘thing’ that had been in front of them a few minutes previously!”

But as the dame is also the good fairy, does that mean she has to behave, and can’t splatter a custard tart in someone’s face?

“I’m involved in something like that, let’s put it that way. But I may not actually do the dirty deed myself!”

lSleeping Beauty opens tomorrow and continues until Sunday, January 18. Tickets are available on 01865 305305 or from the website oxfordplayhouse.com