Filmmaker, actor, presenter and Blue Peter legend Peter Duncan is bringing back his three filmed Panto Online’s pantomimes – Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and Pantoland – for the 2025 festive season.
Panto Online began during lockdown, when Duncan created his own ‘online pantomime’ for audiences across the world to watch on screens, big and small. The result was a magical combination of theatre, music, slapstick, cross-dressing and traditional panto mayhem that could be streamed into homes, schools and care homes – there was even a national cinema release. And, in the years since, with the pandemic nothing more than a fading memory, Panto Online has gone from strength to strength, with a growing number of audiences enjoying the online festive triple-bill each year.
Speaking about the success of Panto Online, Duncan says, “Every year a new audience seems to find our online panto films bringing laughter and storytelling and to the next generation of children and keeping the grown ups entertained.”
Duncan himself meanwhile, continues to entertain audiences on stage in some of the most popular touring musical theatres – from February 2026 you can see him as Bob in the UK and Ireland tour of Priscilla Queen of the Desert – The Musical.
A former Chief Scout and dare-devil presenter, loved by generations, Duncan is no stranger to musical theatre. Over the years he has starred as PT Barnum, Charlie Chaplin in the Little Tramp and Bill Snibson in Me and my Girl. His other musical theatre credits include Pump Boys and Dinettes, Hairspray and Million Dollar Quartet and he received an Olivier nomination for his portrayal of Denry Machin in The Card, at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.
With a TV, film and theatre career now spanning more than five decades, Duncan was surrounded by showbusiness from his earliest days. Born into a touring theatrical family, he joined Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre at 16 years old and spent the 70’s working as an actor when he became a well known face on TV, starring in the BBC speedway drama King Cinder, and in films such as Stardust, Quilp, and Flash Gordon, in which he had a cameo that saw him ‘killed by a tree’.
Duncan joined the Blue Peter team in 1980 and quickly became the show’s action man. He returned for a second stint presenting the weekly magazine programme for kids in 1985 and was later rewarded with his own series, Duncan Dares. At the turn of this century, Peter began making his own TV documentaries including a six part series called Travel Bug in which he, his partner Annie, and their four children backpacked their way around the world.
When not performing around the country, Duncan is based in rural Sussex where he is creating an eco-friendly lifestyle along with the family’s new black Labrador puppy. He has a magical barn housing a cornucopia of pantomime costumes, sets and memorabilia accumulated over many years, but then throughout his career, pantomime has always been an artform close to his heart – he recently starred as panto dame Ronald Roy Humphrey in The Dame, a play written by his daughter Katie – so it should come as no surprise that having written, starred in and produced pantomimes, Duncan’s streamed Panto Online should continue to prove a roaring success – Oh, yes they do!
Tickets here.
