DAME OF THRONES
Biggins joins cast of HBO blockbuster
FLAMBOYANT panto star CHRISTOPHER BIGGINS is set to surprise Game of Thrones viewers when he joins the show’s cast for the HBO blockbuster’s eighth and final series. The veteran entertainer, 70, will dress up to play The Widow Clegane, mother of Sando and Gregor Clegane, better known as the Hound and the Mountain.
Series producer David Benioff told us: “Game of Thrones is known as a dark, gritty, and violent drama, and we thought it would be nice to introduce an element of family-friendly pantomime fun to the show for this final series.”
“Biggins’s brand of over-the-top, camp slapstick has had kiddies and grown-ups alike rolling in the aisles at provincial theatres up and down the country for years,” said Benioff. “And when George RR Martin saw him as Mother Goose at the Pavilion Theatre, Rhyl last Christmas, he immediately went home and wrote a big part for him into his scripts for the new season.”
“Luckily, the On Safari star had an empty diary between January and December, and he was able to fly to Ireland to shoot his scenes with his on-screen sons, played by Rory McCann and Hafbor Julius Bjornsson,” he continued. “He fitted in on set straight away.”
empty
According to show insiders, season 8 viewers will be glued to their screens watching scenes including…
•In
episode 2, in the wake of a massacre at King’s Landing, the Widow Clegane tries unsuccessfully to hang out her sons’ blood-soaked washing on the line while her giant pink and yellow spotty bloomers keep falling down
•In
episode 3, she decides to bake a cake as a peace offering to the Lannisters, following a recipe on a radio cookery programme. But when her back is turned, her sons, the Hound and the Mountain, keep changing the channel backwards and forwards between a sports commentary and a gardening programme, with disastrous results
•In
episode 4, one of the Faceless Men breaks into the her cottage in the dead of night to murder her. By a series of unlikely coincidences, the assassin ends up wearing one of her voluminous nightdresses, and the pair come face to face through a window. The Widow Clegane takes this to be a mirror and tries repeatedly to ‘catch out’ her reflection
•In
episode 5, dressed as Carmen Miranda – complete with a threefoot high fruit hat and outsize maracas – the Widow Clegane leads the whole cast in the ‘Gangnam Style’ dance routine through the streets of King’s Landing
But it won’t all be light-hearted fun and games for Biggins, who shot to fame in the 1970s as camp convict Luke Warm in hit BBC sitcom Porridge. True to the Game of Thrones tradition, his character is set to meet a terrible end. An insider told us: “In a shocking plot twist, all three of the Cleganes, including Biggins, are taken prisoner by the Army of the Iron Islands.”
dempty
“At the climax to the final episode, the Widow Clegane’s eyelids are cut off and she is forced to watch her sons’ brutal executions before the skin is peeled from the top half of her body and she is pegged out for the ravens,” he added.