‘Pantomime season can’t be here already,’ I say. ‘I’m still wearing shorts to the supermarket. It’s too early for Puss In Boots, surely.’ To which you counter: ‘Oh no it isn’t!’ and ‘Don’t call me Surely!’.

You’d be right too, on the first at least. It may be unseasonally mild outdoors, but inside Scotland’s theatres the financial weather is distinctly chilly. No surprise, then, that the curtain goes up on these sure-fire earners a week before St Andrews Day rolls around.

Year-end cash boost aside, pantos also bring children into theatres, which is always a good thing. And for those who attend a lot of theatre outwith the panto season, it’s instructive to see how well the form connects with a modern Scottish theatrical tradition which, even when it’s making serious points, is often also driven by music and rowdy, populist fun.

In other words, we should take panto very seriously indeed. None of this is lost on The Herald’s team of critics, of course, as they hit to stalls and grand circles to take the measure of this year’s crop.

Ahead of the opening of Peter Pan at the King’s Theatre in Glasgow, Brian Beacom sat down for a chat with Hannah Jarrett-Scott, resplendent in her costume for the role of Captain Hook.

An award-winning cast member of Isobel McArthur’s smash hit Pride And Prejudice (Sort Of), Jarrett-Scott cut her panto teeth at the King’s as a three-year-old when actress mother Isabella Jarrett played Dandini there. “I think I want to play up the campery, the flamboyance,” she says of her latest role. “I love the silly narcissism we associate with him. That’s what I want to go for.” Click here to read that interview.

Peter Pan stars Elaine C Smith and Johnny Mac alongside Ms Jarrett-Scott, and it opened last week at the King’s. The Herald’s Mary Brennan has given it a five........

© Herald Scotland