Historical 'Beauty and the Beast'

According to a study published in the Royal Society Open Science Journal, researchers at Durham and Lisbon Universities have recently made an amazing discovery.

Using phylogenetic analysis (which was developed to investigate evolutionary relationships between species) and a tree of Indo-European languages, anthropologist Dr Jamie Tehrani and folklorist Sara Graca Da Silva have been able to establish that the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast is over 4000 years old!

"They have been told since before even English, French and Italian existed".

Back-stage Pass can guarantee to the 600+ ticket holders of the upcoming Tattenhall Amateur Dramatics' performance of Beauty and the Beast that in the 4000 years of re-telling this fantastic story, no-one will have witnessed a version quite like this one! It's worth the ticket price alone to see Madame Fifi in her high heels!

Disclaimer alert – Back-stage Pass can also confirm that the sauna/chippy joke (estimated to be 5000 years old) will be in the panto. Again.