O'Carroll plays his elderly heroine at the Playhouse next week, the latest in a growing number of actors (outside of panto season) to make a success of playing the opposite sex.

But for the life of me I can not see what it is about watching a male tottering about on heels that audiences find so entertaining. Cue David Walliams, "I'm a ladeee . . ."

Cross-dressing stars are nothing new, of course. Four decades ago hardly a Carry On film went by without at least one of the male members of the troupe finding an excuse to drag up.

In the 70s Dick Emery's Mandy made her creator a fortune uttering the immortal line, "Ooh, you are awful . . . but I like you," while the 1980s saw 20 million viewers tune in each week to watch The Two Ronnies, as Messrs Corbett and Barker trans-formed themselves in Rubensesque matrons for their big finale. And that's without mentioning drag acts like Danny la Rue, Dame Edna and Hinge and Brackett.

All would no doubt argue that there is a difference between being a drag act, dame or female impersonator. But is there, and does it matter? It certainly did to Paul O'Grady. Even when Lily Savage was little more than a pub-act, the chat show host would insist that he was an actor creating a character that just happened to be female.

O'Carroll cites the same argument, as did one of his heroes Arthur Lucan, who between 1937 and 1952 made 15 films in the guise of Old Mother Riley. But the tradition predates even Lucan.

In Shakespeare's time women were banned from the stage by law and male actors had to play the female leads. By the Victorian music hall era, the tradition had evolved into that of the masculine panto dame.

However, while it has long been acceptable to watch a man playing a woman on stage at Christmas time, the practice is now creeping into mainstream musical theatre too.

Blame Divine, the gargantuan Baltimore female impersonator who, before passing away in his sleep at the age of just 42, set the bar for all who would follow in his fluffy slippers.

Divine was a long-time collaborator of cult film maker John Waters and starred in many of his low-budget epics.

But it was as Edna Turnblad, in the original 1988 movie version of Hairspray, alongside Debbie Harry and the then unknown Ricki Lake, that Divine, the alter-ego of Harris Glen Milstead, made his mark.

In 2007 when Waters gave the thumbs up for a big- budget remake of Hairspray it was John Travolta who donned Edna Turnblad's fat-suit to recreate Divine's rotund frame, a role he reprised nightly on Broadway and one that Michael Ball is currently receiving rave reviews for on London's West End, opposite Mel Smith and Leanne Jones.

I still don't quite get it – why not just hire a really good character actress? However, as long as there are men willing to don a frock it appears there's an audience happy to pay to see them.

Just ask O'Carroll, as Agnes Brown he's been selling out for years.

"In a society that tries to standardise thinking, individuality is not highly prized." Alex Gray