You know two actors I always get mixed up? Judi Dench and the late Jeremy Beadle.

I know what you’re thinking: Judi doesn’t have a perm. Well spotted. But both are national treasures, both look/ed splendid in a crushed linen suit, both go down a freaking storm on ITV and both, it turns out, love/d a good prank. Talking on Radio 4’s Front Row recently, Dame Judi revealed that she feels about practical jokes the way Depeche Mode felt about early-’80s electronica hits and Brad Pitt feels about facial pubis: she just can’t get enough.

One of the Dench’s favourite pranks involves a wooden hand and black leather glove. It goes back to some bash at “Dame Peggy’s” where old Tim “Piggo” Pigott-Smith was doing a turn as a character with a “sexy” wooden hand. Please stop me if this is all getting just too jolly.

Anyway, after a chance remark by the woman Daniel Craig calls M, the aforementioned Pigott-Smith came towards Judi on stage the next night “with his black hand tucked up under this doublet”, as the actress said to the bishop. Bishop Mark Lawson, that is. Since when, the black-gloved hand has travelled the world, interrupting, distracting and “corpsing” actors in productions ranging from Shakespearean tragedy to Australian farce.

You see, in a world in which actors talk about the “painful emotional journey” involved in standing on stage in a pair of tights, or bemoan the “crippling physical pressure” of a two-hour on-stage shift, it’s nice to know that some actors, at least, are taking things a little less seriously.

While dying on stage is every performer’s nightmare – particularly comedians – getting an already deceased, on-stage corpse to burst into a fit of giggles can be a strange and exhilarating rush. It can also mediate the crushing boredom of being in a suburban pantomime production of Jack and the Beanstalk in which the giant is played by an alcoholic ex-athlete and the beanstalk is made of asbestos.

But, while dishing out a plate of lols is a theatrical feast, being on the receiving end of a corpsing attack is no laughing matter. So, just how can those brave young theatrical soldiers bite back their crippling rofls?

Singer Kate Rusby apparently imagines a bag of kittens drowning in a canal, actress Francesca Fenech suggests biting the inside of your mouth and comedian Dave Bibby goes for the old erectile classic of thinking about Margaret Thatcher. Words guaranteed to take all joy and laughter out of any situation.

And me? Well, going back to my school days I suggest a two-pronged attack. First of all, imagine walking in on your mother having sex with Jeremy Clarkson up against an enormous photograph of Anne Widdecombe, while simultaneously pulling your thumb back so hard you fear it might snap.

And they say you learn nothing in Year 9 science lessons.

Illustration by Narcsville.

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