You don't become the most famous living name in Irish theatre without acquiring a highly developed sense of irony along the way. Maureen Potter has done everything the stage has to offer, bar opera. A survivor of the great age of variety, she has performed in revues, cabaret, political satire, is synonymous with panto in Ireland and has also appeared in a range of theatrical roles from Sheridan to Shaw, O'Casey and Beckett.

Timing comes naturally to her and being interviewed for the umpteenth time is simply another part of being what she repeatedly refers to herself as: "an old pro". Her life is linked to the social and cultural history of Ireland as well as to the childhood memories of several generations for whom the Dublin panto was part of Christmas.

Having her career discussed in the context of social history is a weighty enough observation for Potter to respond with characteristic aplomb - and she summons up yet another of the many funny faces she has filed away in her extensive repertoire. Throughout her career she has abided by the adage "leave 'em laughing", and she still does.

She is as tiny as everyone says. Small enough to be the candle on top of the birthday cake in 1936, celebrating the Theatre Royal's first year in existence. "I came out and sang Happy Birthday, I'd no mike - I just belted it out." Her voice is the biggest part of her: Potter the singer possesses an Ethel Merman-like range. It is a big singing voice and her speaking voice, regardless of whatever accent she happens to be mimicking, also has great resonance. "Well, we were taught to project. You couldn't always rely on a microphone."

Mobility is crucial to the stage performer's craft and as Potter points out, moving about is not so easy for her anymore, "que sera, sera". She has undergone hip replacements and has had her knee rebuilt; she is not complaining but simply pointing out the physical demands of a life that looks like fun but certainly adds to the wear and tear of daily existence. "Panto means being able to run about. I used to run and jump up the side of the stage, never mind dancing. I'd hide, leap out of things, be everywhere. I can't anymore." This is said with a smile as well as some frank sadness.

Her biggest regret is not being able to dance. That and, of course, the number of old friends and colleagues who are now dead. "What can I tell you?" she asks good naturedly. How about beginning at the beginning, with her childhood. She seems to agree. "We'll start at the very beginning," she sings, mock Julie Andrews-like, taking her cue from The Sound of Music, "a very good place to start."

Face animated, moving almost too fast for the camera, hands gesturing and a range of accents at the ready. Potter is so used to an audience she sets the scene as if she were going to tell a story. "I was born in 1925," wide eyes, pause, "and I'm a Dub, a northsider. The south side is beautiful but there's no space. There's lots of space on the northside, I love space. I grew up in Fairview. You know it?" Both of her parents were from Dublin. "We're all Dubs from way back." She had two brothers and says she didn't much like the idea of going to school and only agreed to go on the condition that she could also attend dancing classes.

At five she joined Jewel Byrne's classes at the local CYMS hall. Miss Byrne soon reckoned her pupil was destined for greater things and sent her on to Connie Ryan who ran a much more sophisticated operation which included the training of the O'Dea Girls - the chorus line for Jimmy O'Dea at the Theatre Royal. O'Dea would of course in time prove vital in Potter's career and life. But for the moment she is still intent on recalling the reluctant little school kid, faced with the problem of going to a school which was situated so close to her home: "it was almost impossible to mitch". By introducing the theme of truancy, Potter has cleverly prepared the way for a routine. Suddenly she is the determined child, casually strolling up and down the street outside the school, pretending to read "one of those old comics, a Girls' Crystal or something", she says.

So far so good. Just like that she has created a scene. Enter the Big Policeman. Potter lowers her voice. "And what do you think you're doing?" she growls in her policeman's voice, "why aren't you at school?" The little girl replies with spirit: "I'm sick." Her audience can guess the next line. "Oh no you aren't." There should be a capacity panto audience primed to shout in support of the truant, "oh yes she is". Exit imaginary child pursued by flat-footed policeman.

Potter is not going to dwell on her days at St Mary's National School in Phillipsburgh Avenue. It seems pointless to ask her about her lost childhood. She doesn't seem to have had one. Nor is she likely to answer a question so potentially personal. Maureen Potter is the consummate professional, and she prides herself on it. At seven she was already All Ireland Junior Irish Dancing champion and had also completed her first professional engagement, a week's dancing at the Colmcille Hall in Derry. The fee? Seven shillings and six old pennies. By the age of 10, the astute Ms Ryan had set Potter on the way to what would be a life in show business.

Having auditioned for Jimmy O'Dea who had seen her in a concert party at Bray, she appeared in his 1935 panto, playing a fairy in Jack And The Beanstalk. As well as guarding the beanstalk, Potter's fairy, complete with specially tailored morning suit, top hat and unco-operative, stick-on moustache, did an impersonation of Alfie Byrne, Dublin's popular Lord Mayor of the time. The show also marked the first of many O'Dea and Potter sketches which were to become legendary, continuing until his death in 1965.

But before teaming up with O'Dea she also worked for impresario Jack Hylton in Dublin. Having auditioned for him near the end of the school term, a brief silence was ended by a telegram offering her a job as "The Pocket Mimic" in the Theatre Royal. She soon joined Hylton's troupe and set off for London with a borrowed birth cert: "I was too young to work in England at that time; children under 14 were not allowed." Of her young self she says: "I was very funny looking, I had these huge bushy eyebrows and when I'd get on a bus, the conductor would peer at me, `that's not a child, it's a dwarf'." Huge laughter.

Potter does not respond to questions. She has a story and questions for her are like prompts. She doesn't need them. She begins describing her official look. "I was dressed up like Shirley Temple - I didn't look like her, God love her and I did not have curly hair. But they made me wear curlers. And these awful clothes and me with my big eyebrows and the rest, I did look like a dwarf. I still hate curls."

Back to her time with Hylton: they toured all over England, Scotland and Wales. They also hit continental Europe. Hitler had invaded Austria and Hylton's band arrived in Germany "There we were at the Scala, Berlin. And who's in the audience one night? Only Hitler, Goebbels and Goering." She pauses for effect and seems pleased by her listener's surprise. It was 1938 and child stars were a novelty in Germany. Maureen had impressed. Goebbels and Goering came back stage to meet her. As a farewell present she was given a silver and blue wreath: "It came with some words on it from Hitler himself, quite a souvenir," she says. Her mother was less impressed. "When I got home I gave it to her and she said, `that filthy man Hitler' and threw it in the bin. That was the end of it. A little piece of history."

While the English papers were, she says, "howling about the invasion", the German press ignored what was going on. Not surprisingly Potter's mother was becoming anxious. "We were walking down the prom in Blackpool and we heard Chamberlain announcing `we are at war with Germany'." It was Sunday, September 3rd. The theatres had all closed on the previous Friday. Potter smiles and recalls Spike Milligan's reaction to war. "He was hilarious, he jumped up and said `what did he say, we are now at war with Germany. Who's we, I never said anything'." More laughter. She was ordered home and joined up with Jimmy O'Dea "and we toured Ireland, it was wonderful". It may have been wonderful but conditions were very different to those she had experienced in pre-war England.

There the landladies looked after their "stars" and, in fact, competed for the pleasure. In Ireland actors were viewed as not quite respectable. She assumes a disapproving, Reverend Mother-like frown. "We didn't have any money either. So it was all up in the back of a lorry with the scenery and the old tarp trying to keep the dust off us and it didn't."

Arrival in any town was always preceded by a standard routine. Climbing out of the truck, dusting off and trying to assume the air of people who had travelled there by rail. "We carried our smaller cases and left the bigger, shabby stuff on the lorry. Conditions in Ireland are now wonderful. There are fabulous theatres and halls and hotels. But in those days, well it was The Ballroom Of Romance and often far worse." It was often cold, with poor washing facilities, nowhere to hang costumes and little comfort at the lodgings either. "And lodgings were difficult, never mind bad; people didn't like renting to `theatricals'. We weren't, you know," mock posh, "quite respectable."

While still a teenager she had finally broken free of her Shirley Temple curls and had become O'Dea's straight "feed" in his sketches. It also meant that the child star had survived the difficult transition to adult performer. In 1939, she and O'Dea appeared in Jimmy And The Leprechaun - guess who played the Leprechaun?

Potter speaks very quickly, with deceptive attention to detail. She knows exactly what she is saying and is as in control of her memory in an interview as she was of her material on stage. She loves panto and among her all-time favourites are Tom Thumb and The Pied Piper Of Hamelin. Did she ever play a baddie? Big laugh: "I was Miss Hannigan in Annie and I was a baddie," she says, with the stress on "baddie". While touring she met Jack O'Leary, a career soldier, in 1943. They became friends and married in 1959. They have two sons and live in Clontarf. O'Leary has written a lot of her material. He became involved in writing from hearing her read lines.

Because she has been so visible over the years, and to so wide an audience, through panto and cabaret and theatre, it is easy to overlook the more serious side of Potter who has an extensive knowledge of stage in all its aspects. It was she who alerted many people interested in the history of comedy to the genius of the great Jimmy James, one of the two funniest men she has ever seen on stage - the other was Jimmy O'Dea. According to Potter, James was a "comedian's comedian" revered in the north of England but never quite accorded the national recognition he deserved. She saw his manic quality as predating that pioneered by the Goons. Speaking about the great age of variety, when a comedian like James could perform his hilarious material to a different theatre audience every week for 40 weeks of the year, she points out how television changed all that. One performance can now be seen by millions, and the same millions expect something different next week. The turnover of material is far greater. Of variety, she says: "It was the cinema of its day and don't forget, performers had to do everything. You had to be able to sing, to dance, learn lines, act."

When the Gate Theatre brought its production of Juno And The Paycock to Jerusalem in 1987, various Israelis who had been born in Ireland and had settled in Israel came to meet her. The casting of Potter as Maisie Madigan in Joe Dowling's production of O'Casey's Juno in 1986 seemed an exciting innovation, building on her performance in Arsenic And Old Lace with Siobhan McKenna in the previous year's Dublin Theatre Festival. Years earlier she had appeared in other "straight" roles: in The Man Who Came To Dinner, The Golden Cuckoo and Androcles And The Lion. In 1989 she played Mrs Candour in the Gate production of The School For Scandal. Two years ago she returned to O'Casey, this time playing Mrs Henderson in The Shadow Of A Gunman.

About the business of timing. Is there that much of a difference between variety and drama? "I think it's all performing. Many great variety artists have done both. There's a great tradition of it." For her it doesn't matter what she is appearing in, the nerves are the same. "I have always suffered from terrible nerves." She looks directly and is quite serious, "I mean nervous to the pint of getting sick and I have at times vomited. You are always worried in case something goes wrong, or they don't like you. You can never be sure of anything."

Jimmy O'Dea died in 1965. Her expression says more than words. His death not only was a personal loss, it also made her reassess her career. By then her two sons were small boys. Even as babies they had been part of Potter's theatre life, often being brought to rehearsals in carry cots. Work never stopped, except for completely unavoidable interruptions such as labour and delivery. The next phase came in the form of a revue, Gaels Of Laughter. Such was the show's success that it ran every summer at the Gaiety Theatre for 15 years.

Long established as a national institution, she was the subject of a Late Late Show special tribute in 1976. Of the many great stories attached to the Potter legend is her meeting with de Valera. He kept calling her Betty. Potter was not impressed. Another story is one she tells about her mother, a talented singer, good enough to share a concert platform with John McCormack and Margaret Burke Sheridan. "My mother heard him, McCormack, remark to Margaret Burke herself, `but darling, why do you sing such trash?' I always thought it was a bit much from him considering some of the awful Come all ye stuff he used to sing" - and she launches into a high-pitched rendition of an Edwardian parlour song. Panto has changed. "It is tougher, brasher. But even with the competition offered by cinema and special effects and all that, kids still love the fact they can participate, shout back. Some of them, you'd feel like shouting back, "okay, you write the script". She knows she made the genre her own, so she has little to add about her contribution. She is proud of her ability to remember the lists of names and events and call them out from the stage to expectant members of the audience.

"My record was 67. People used to think I had a small mike or a prompter or something. But I didn't. I'd memorise the names. While the others would be relaxing at the interval, I'd be learning the names. It was great. I loved it."

She has strong critical opinions and it is not even necessary to ask if she approves of some of the poor fare passing as variety these days. There are no lamentations, no regrets, but the thing she misses most is dancing. "Dancing, particularly tap. You certainly can't manage that sort of thing with bad knees. But c'est la vie."

Maureen Potter Looks Back, an eight-part series, begins next Tuesday, June 9th, on RTE Radio One, 7.05 p.m.