William Hickey

Bringing the gossip since 1933

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WEEKS after Nigel Havers completed another lucrative pantomime run at the London Palladium, his grumpy former agent Michael Whitehall takes unflattering aim.

Despite his friendship with the actor stretching back decades, Whitehall confirms he gave Nigel's latest appearance as Keeper of the Privy in Sleeping Beauty a wide berth.

"He's been doing that pantomime in different forms for so long. I couldn't take it again," growls Michael, who these days famously performs with comedian son Jack Whitehall. "It's basically a variation on a theme and the variation is fairly light."

A Palladium panto regular since 2017, Nigel's association with the Whitehalls has proved eventful down the years: when paying a hospital visit to Michael's actress wife Hilary, shortly after the birth of Jack in 1988, heartthrob Havers was awkwardly misidentified as the baby's father.