© Madame Galina Madame Galina's Iraq Diary Madame Galina Welog Madame Galina reviews Jane Simpson reviews

Ask Iestyn Edwards about his dancing career and superficially it all sounds quite orthodox: inspired by his first visits to Swan Lake, he found himself an excellent teacher who gave him both the foundations of technique and an education in the background to ballet. It all goes off the rails a bit, though, when you dig a bit deeper and discover that not only was he already grown up at the time but also that what he was learning was the great ballerina repertoire. Never having seen a ballet till his late teens, by the time the bug struck him he was working front-of-house at Covent Garden and hoping to make a career as a singer. Then came Swan Lake.

"I just thought it was fantastic. It made perfect sense to me - there was something totally right about how it was set on its music. Gradually, after I'd watched it maybe three times, I realised that it meant something, it was telling me something - so I asked Stella."

Stella was Stella Beddard, who many will remember as an extremely elegant usher, who at one time also ran the bookstall in the foyer of the pre-redevelopment Royal Opera House.

"She said 'Oh, it's the Queen of the Swans telling the Prince about the enchanter's spell', and she took me through it: I was fascinated by this whole new language so I tried it myself - from the entrance of the swan, and then the mime - and that was the start. Stella taught me everything. She was a dancer herself - she trained with Mary Honer (which is why I can do fouettés) and with Maria Fay, and danced in companies in Yugoslavia and in Munich. She's a gentle teacher: she never got ratty, she never thought it was amusing, she just taught me, but you had to come up to her standards - 'Not that leg - how many more times? Nikiya starts on the other leg!' And she also gave me reading lists, novels, symphonies to listen to - it was a fantastic all-round education at age 20."

"So I started to learn the Swan Queen and we never ever questioned why I would; and then I think the next ballet that came on was Sleeping Beauty - so we learned the Rose Adage - and it went on - each time a new ballet came on, I would struggle to learn it. Every day I had lessons in the foyer, and latecomers used to watch - and that went on till there was a notice about a gala which said that the best thing about the evening was the foutte competition in the foyer, and house manager put a stop to it. But by then I'd got used to having an audience, and I'd learned to respond."

Around the same time, Iestyn started a singing course at the Guildhall School of Music. He still sings - not least in the curtain-raiser for his act - but his voice is somewhere between the standard tenor and baritone registers so a career in opera was never a real option. That, and coming up against fellow students like Bryn Terfel, made him realise that he needed to find a niche of his own - and Madame Galina was born. Working at the ROH gave him lots of opportunites to pick up material by watching rehearsals. "I used to come in and watch Patricia Neary coach whenever I could, for example, because it was so fascinating watching a different approach." But it was Makarova who was the most direct influence on Galina - "Makarova and my mother. I've got a lot of little ballerina bits - I've read every diva book under the sun - but I think mainly those two."

Madam Galina's first appearance was at a private party, and in her early days she didn't speak. She had given one or two interviews, but it was not till Iestyn was appearing at the Cabaret Club and reached the finals of the Busker of the Year competition that he had to write some material for her, very fast. These days, he sees his act as a send-up of mannerisms, but with a core of seriousness in his approach to the actual dancing. He does a 'class' every morning, using Maria Fay's video, and though - unlike the Trocks - he's never thought of going on pointe (too much danger of a broken ankle), there are some steps which seem to come very easily to him.

Turning to the practicalites, I asked where exactly he found someone who makes tutus in his size ( - he's close on six foot as well as being slightly stouter than the average Odette). "The first one was made for my by someone who worked in the costumes department at the ROH. He didn't really like me as a person but he loved Galina - it was like the reverse of the Fairy Godmother: he said 'You really need a costume', and he measured me and said to come back in two weeks, and in two weeks there was my first tutu. I kept that one for years - I wore it from 1987 to 2004, because I loved it - I tried to give it away and get a new one but I couldn't, we'd been through too much; and then a friend made the second lot for me. For shoes I've just got normal flatties - I make them pink, and bash them up, and put ribbons on them - at the moment I'm still wearing my Iraq ones, I can't bear to part with them. They get moulded to my feet so I don't have to worry about them. A couple of times I've gone on with new shoes and the fouettes have been very ropy."

And how many dates have you got in your diary right now?

"To the end of the year, I've got just about 2 a week - 6 already for December, and I might do a pantomime too, a sort of take on the fairy godmother. They're all over the country, and in Holland too - they love Galina in Holland - I'm going back for the fourth time now. It's mostly in small theatres but I do a lot of very different places too - in one week last year I realised I'd done a really nice theatre gig, a birthday party and a corporate gig and two spots at the ROH, for their Christmas party."

That last one sounds nearly as terrifying as a room full of squaddies, I'd have thought, but apparently it went well. Iestyn uses a Ken Dodd technique to get the feeling of an audience - at the start of the show he has three 'test' gags, and varies his act according to which one goes down the best. Repeat audiences, though, don't like it if he misses out their favourite bits, the ones they've brought their friends to see.

And so to Iraq. Iestyn got into this entirely by mistake, thinking he was being auditioned for corporate gigs in Park Lane until it was too late to back out and he found himself flying out to entertain the troops. The tour manager, Nicky Ness ("who I'd go on my nose to, as Birgit Nilsson used to say"), had for some time been looking for a novelty act to add to the bill of stand-up comedians, and had faith that Madam Galina would work - a huge risk, it must have seemed at the time, and I'd bet she had her heart in her mouth through the first couple of performances. But it did work, despite dire warnings of what might happen if the soldiers took against him.

Iestyn had up to half an hour at each show, starting with the entrance of Princess Aurora, in flak jacket and helmet... maybe we shouldn't think too hard about the rest of it, on a serious dance site like this. He was fortunate to have the support and advice of the other entertainers, especially Rod Gilbert, and at least one of them went off to see 'real' ballet for himself when they got back to London. And from the audiences, almost miraculously you'd think, no negative response at all. "Never, not at all - it's amazing. But then my brief was to embarrass officers as much as possible. Things happened by accident - like taking the flak jacket off and falling on the Colonel's lap - and then I left them in; and they've asked me to go to Afghanistan now so it must have been OK."

One thing that's very noticeable when talking to Iestyn is that he seems to see Galina as a real person, with a life apart from him. He says 'she does' or 'she thinks' rather than 'I do', and she apparently has the rest of her career well planned out until retirement - including her great ambition, which is to marry RB soloist Thomas Whitehead - a one-sided passion, we assume. Iestyn, meanwhile, has plans for a television series which may bring her even wider recognition and fame.