It is not easy being small, but Janette Tough has built a successful career playing naughty schoolboy Jimmy Krankie. Alison Jones reports.

Journalism is a peculiar sort of a job, one day you might be down a mine peering at 420 million year old fossils embedded in limestone, the next looking at Jimmy Krankie's fake inflatable boobs.

The breasts in questions, which look like the remnants of a rubber balloon from a long forgotten party, are being held by Jimmy's alter ego Janette Tough, who is describing how tying the cotton to keep the air in has cut husband Ian's fingers to ribbon.

Apparently Ian is suffering because he has been messing with garlic all morning which has left his fingers split.

"He does all the cooking," says Janette. "I'd be lost without him that way. Every morning he will cook for the day and bring it into the theatre so we get home made food, and he makes soup every day."

It is her failure to get to grips with some traditional wifely duties that is one of the reasons, she says, that the couple have repeatedly turned down invitations to go on Celebrity Wife Swap.

"I've had no children, I cannae cook. All I can do is drive my Mini Cooper, play golf and go shopping. That would be me."

There is also the fact that they're not desperate for that kind of fame. The Krankies' time in the television sun may have been over by the early 90s but they are not about to throw themselves to the wolves of reality TV.

"I'm not really interested in celebrity," says Janette. "When we were brought up in the business your performance was the main thing. And with me being my height and with my voice I get spotted anyway, I don't need it to keep my profile up.

"I can go down the street and be recognised. I still have builders up on scaffolding shouting 'Hello Jimmy. Fandabidozi'.

And more than 30 years of hearing her famous catchphrase is not about to reduce her to Alan Davies's ear-biting level of agitation.

"I don't mind. I don't like when they lift me up and pat me on the head, if you get guys who maybe have a bit to drink. That can get a wee bit frightening."

Apart from the Scottish brogue and familiar impish grin there are very few traces of Jimmy in the offstage Janette, who is dressed in smart sweater and skirt, sparkly tights and heeled Mary Janes, her hair neatly bobbed.

The only difference between her and any other woman of her age is her doll size proportions.

But over the years Janette has developed an armour-plated tolerance to jibes about her lack of inches (she is 4ft 6in), after all she and Ian have built their comedy careers around it.

She points to the inflatable bed in the middle of her narrow dressing room backstage at the Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, where she and Ian are performing in Dick Whittington. Decorated with a High School Musical quilt, she can use it to rest up between performances.

"One of the dancers said 'that's brilliant, we should get one for our room'. I said 'it is only for ages six to 11.'," she says, breaking into a ready giggle.

Pantomime is the Krankies most regular gig. They spend the early part of the year relaxing at their second home on Australia's Gold Coast and then might do summer seasons in various luxury holiday resorts.

Reading past reviews it becomes clear that 40 years of experience has given them such faultless comic timing it usually results in them stealing the show from under more famous stars' noses.

She accepts that many youngsters in the audience have no idea who the naughty schoolboy on stage is or where mum and dad learnt this peculiar new word Fandabidozi.

"The parents remember us and they are amazed that their children laugh at the same things they laughed at. Although they don't know me I think children accept the character. They love anarchy."

Ian and Janette have up-dated the act by acknowledging that they know that the audience knows that Jimmy is really Ian's 60-year-old wife dressed up like Just William.

"It's how I get half the laughs. When Ian throws me about as the ventriloquist's dummy it really is quite physical. I say 'how many more years of this have I got?' then I look at the audience and go 'and me with my bus pass'."

Back in the late 70s and early 80s the Krankies were a sensation on shows like the Royal Variety Performance and Crackerjack, but by the the early 90s their brand of end of the pier, knockabout humour was passe. Suddenly admitting you found them funny would have been as embarrassing as confessing to a teenage crush on Keith Chegwin.

Janette says she didn't mind as the television work gradually faded, but admits that Ian was concerned lest their livelihood should disappear while they were still only in their 40s.

However, an apartment in Australia and house in Torquay are evidence that they have more than managed to scrape by. In fact Janette admits she has just spent her fuel allowance on a nice new coat.

"When you have been around so long you have to accept that things change. They go through attitudes. I think what helped is I have done quite a lot of French and Saunders, that's good television because although they are taking the mickey out of me it's good humoured."

However, the Krankies almost came to an abrupt end three years ago when Janette was seriously injured in panto after a beanstalk she was climbing collapsed beneath her and a co-star.

Janette crashed to the stage, fracturing her skull and breaking her collar bone and ribs.

"I remember falling and Ian saying 'don't touch her, don't move her' but I don't remember the ambulance and the first hospital I was in.

"The children in the audience must have heard it because Ian said I screamed and then I just went quiet and there was a loud bang when the beanstalk collapsed.

"Luckily it was just after the first half finale so there was a blackout. It could easily have gone the other way and fallen in the audience."

She received a six-figure insurance payout but was off work for seven months as she struggled to cope with the after effects of her head injury.

"The first time I went back on stage. I wasn't quite right. You are frightened in case your energy value is not there but it is fine now."

Apart from her accident Janette has had few health scares. Even her lack of height was never a major concern.

"When I was about 10 I went to the hospital in Glasgow and had examinations and they said 'Oh she is tiny but she is fine'.

"Nowadays they would probably give you growth hormones or something.

"The boys at school used to shout 'here's the giant coming' and I used to laugh at it. I didn't take it as bullying and they weren't cruel."

At 16 she was working in an office doing the filing using a ladder when a co-worker suggested she try showbusiness.

She auditioned for a show called The World of Widow Crankie, playing one of her six children.

Afterwards she and one of her stage "siblings" Margaret Murray put together their own act called The Krankie Kids and took it to the emerging club circuit in Manchester.

"Margaret was about 4ft 10ins and I was 4ft 6ins and we were working places like strip clubs, doing a song and dance spot between the acts.

"One night one of the stripper's walked into the dressing room, saw my make upon the table and said 'Can I borrow your lipstick love?'. I said yes and she lifted up her jumper and put it on her nipples.

"Margaret and I were just sitting in a corner going 'What are we doing here?'

"We used to work with a lot of drag queens as well and because we were only 18 they used to walk us to the bus stop to make sure we got back to our digs."

The Krankie Kids split when Margaret went to Germany to sing on the American bases. Janette returned to panto in Scotland and met Ian, the theatre electrician and an aspiring Butlin's Red Coat.

When they started dating they decided to put an act together so they wouldn't be parted when they were booked to do gigs.

Jimmy was created a few years later when they needed another skit for their cabaret slot in between bingo games.

Using Ian's grandfather's school boots and his brother's cap and blazer they came up with a little boy walking through the tables trying to find his mother.

"And the monster was born," says Janette. Despite living and working so closely together, the couple have had a long and happy relationship.

"He was my first real boyfriend, though I went out with a Canadian soldier when I was in Manchester who kept saying he wanted to take me to Canada to meet his mama, but then I met Ian and I didn't want to see him any more.

"Ian and I both like the same things, we like playing golf and we had 14 years of motor boating. We used to live on the boat when we did summer season.

"We have had no children and we never really went into the reasons why it didn't happen. But, to be truthful, what you never have you never miss and our life has been very full.

"We have been able to do what we want to do because we haven't had to think about family."

She says they probably wouldn't have been able to spend as much time performing and living in Australia if they had family commitments.

Their home there is only 20 miles from the I'm A Celebrity camp and Janette and Ian were persuaded to visit when one of the producers came across them strolling along the beach.

"It was the year Wayne Sleep was on they made me a little safari suit and had me trying to break into the camp.

"It was all ad lib and Ian said 'Right Jimmy, you get in there because nobody from Scotland has ever been in this and this could boost your career'. Then he left me.

"There was this guard with corks in his hat who spotted me and I said 'I am looking for my brother Wayne Sleep, cos I am his wee brother, Cannae Sleep', then we had a wee chase.

"They played this on ITV2 and a reporter from the Sun phoned me up and said 'Did you really think that would boost your career?' and I said 'No. It was a joke. Moi, with a three bedroom, two bathroom, double garage apartment on the Tweed river, I don't think so.' and put the phone down," she adds, giggling again.

These days the Krankies only accept the engagements that appeal to them and Janette says they will know when the time is right to call it quits.

"We'll stop when the energy values have gone. I won't be one of these old pros who wants to die on the stage, 'I must do this or my life has finished'. I'll just play more golf." 

* The Krankies are appearing in Dick Whittington at the Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton until January 27. For more information call 01902 429212 or look up www.grandtheatre.info.