Does this mean panto is dead?
The rule should be - as long as the principal boy is a girl then you can have a pantomime dame. However if the principal boy is 'Scott from Emmerdale' (don't watch Emmerdale - have no idea if there are any current or past characters specifically named Scott) then the role of pantomime dame must be given to a woman.
And also the jokes about the pantomime dame should not be misogynistic, or making fun of her because she dares to be an older and unattractive woman in public (the horror!)
There shouldn't be anything inherently offensive about a man dressing up as a woman - the problem is when it is done with the sole aim to mock and belittle women then it is misogynistic. I don't find Matt Lucas as Margery Dawes offensive, as the joke is she is horrible to fat people. I do find Matt Lucas dressed up as Bubbles Devere offensive because the joke is she is physically disgusting.
Some like it Hot isn't offensive, Nuns on the Run isn't offensive, Rupert Everett in St. Trinians and John Travolta in Hairspray aren't offensive - because the joke isn't on women and isn't about how disgusting they are. The same cannot be said for too many drag acts.
I suspect the reason LB thought they could get away with black face was because they were playing characters who happened to be black but the joke wasn't their blackness it was some horrendous characteristic linked to their personality which was the same for all the other characters. It was trying to show not everyone in Britain was white.
People think it was offensive anyway and fair enough - not my place to say otherwise. But if I had to guess what their rationale at the time was I would guess that they wanted to show diversity and not make an all white show and assumed it was OK to dress up as ethnic minorities as long as the joke wasn't that they were ethnic minorities, they were the same as all the other characters just incidentally BAME. (Athough I've never seen a Ting Tong sketch - that might be horrendously racist)
When it comes to men dressing up as women I would prefer to see some nuance in the discussion rather than a blanket ban. What the purpose behind it is, who is being laughed at. Because it's the content of the act that should be considered offensive or not, not that an actor is pretending to be someone they're not - even a cross sex someone. Unfortunately I think this means Mrs. Brown's Boys would not come under any kind of drag ban.
Drag however - mostly comes under deeply offensive. But that doesn't mean Drag has to be offensive. They can carry on expressing themselves however they like as long as they get rid of the 'fishy' 'bitchy' stuff and recognise that is problematic. They don't get a pass on that because it's a part of their culture. But if they can get rid of the woman hating aspects of drag then it wouldn't be offensive. Though I don't know enough about drag to know if - once the misogyny is removed - if there is anything left to perform... though someone up thread mentioned Lily Savage, it's a long time since I've seen any Lily Savage but I don't remember 'her' being offensive or misogynistic. So it can be done.