SEASONAL FAVOURITE

Man-hungry Ugly Sisters making fart gags? Check. Drippingly wet Cinderella and Prince upstaged by every other member of cast? Check. Carriage pulled by Shetland ponies? Check. Gerard Kelly in capri pants? Check. Obligatory ‘haunted house’ scene with no relevance to plot necessitating much frenzied screaming of ‘Behind you!’? Check. ‘Bring doon the cloot!’? Check. So thoroughly does the King’s annual festive jamboree tick every possible panto box that there are absolutely no surprises here at all. However, everyone in the audience still leaves with a big fat grin on their face.

Of course, it’s the utterly uncynical, never-flagging performances by stalwarts Kelly (Buttons) and Andy Gray (the Baron) that make the whole thing such a gleeful delight.

Let’s just hope that the brilliant Karen Dunbar, swapping wigs and ballgowns at a surely-impossible pace to play both the Fairy Godmother and the Wicked Stepmother, doesn’t exhaust herself before next year.