A FORMER Clacton performer has sailed into the lead role of Colchester’s Christmas panto.

Ian Sippitt, whose stage name is Ian Kendall, is playing in Dick Whittington and the Pi-rates of the Caribbean at the Mercury Theatre.

He’s on a theatrical journey to the West Indies- a place he is used to visiting as a singer and dancer on the cruise ships.

But now the twenty-three year-old former pupil at Colbayns School, Clacton, is in the leading spotlight on the Colchester stage until January 10-just four years after he landed his first professional job at the same theatre.



Full details in Thursday's Gazette