Bobby Birss Rant: Pirates, pies, and proper fun

Last week in July. It's panto time!

Probably not what most of you are thinking at this moment in time. The sun is in the sky, the thermometer gauge seems to have forgotten what under 30 looks like and the news is giving out advice as to how to keep cool in a heat wave.

It's the first week of the summer holiday for us education types and so I have to write a panto to start rehearsal in September for a production at the end of November. Why write one? Most of the ones that you can buy are ...well...not very funny...in a so bad it's not even good enough to go inside a Christmas cracker kind of way.

I'm not saying I'm going to be any better but writing one seems better than buying scripts and the rights to perform one and then spending ages amending it so that it's slightly funny and makes sense.

Having do e Jack and the beanstalk last year to critical acclaim....well most of the HBO red carpet interviews appeared to be pleased, I thought that I would try something new. A well known story that wasn't usually seen as a panto. Once you've done Cinderella, Snow White, Aladdin, Jack, Babes in the Wood, Puss in boots etcetera....you are back to doing the same ones again but from a different script.

I thought I'd try treasure island. Yup! For a start there's no fairy. No Dame, no love interest and even Jim Hawkins mum gets written out by page 27 so really no women. My problem then is how to write a panto when I have a cast predominantly of women. Not easy when as a bloke I have to put myself in a dress.....it's never good to have a female Dame.

Trying to find the right blend of humour for children which is immature and involves burps, farts and general schoolboy humour. Humour for adults which involves innuendo and double entendre gags a plenty as well as a smattering of visual gags such as custard pies, chases, silly violence etc.

So here I am this week, In the hot conservatory (with the door open) letting the sweat run down my back as I bang the keys of my netbook. ( banging the keyboard keys chortle chortle snigger) want to get a first full draft done before hospital on Monday so I can then go back and pick it apart. I'd love to work in the garden but you just ain't see the screen properly. I'll bet that Shakespeare never had this problem. "Shall I compare thee to a summers day, thou art so bright that I cannot see my netbook screen my dear"

I will then need to do a couple of read throughs to see what works and what needs to change.

Then when I know what cast I have......write extra parts to fit in with what I have already. ....( apparently 4/5 more than last year), easy enough to do as I add a page with dialogue for 2 or 3 characters through out the book.

Keep sending copies to Sally the song mistress, hopefully back from her honeymoon so we can start thinking of group and individual numbers to fit in with the story.

Ideas fly round and round my head. There are a load of gags that I have written down that I've not put in yet and a thousand Ahar gags that need to be included....that's not a sea mist...it's a har Jim Ladd......

Already sketching ideas for simple stage design that involves painting four flats....but only on one side....Ken will be disappointed as he used no flats last year.....cutting out some barrels and ships railings from mdf and getting the inside for a carpet roll to use as a mast. Plus some rope and that's as simple as I can make it.

Will need loads of stripey tshirts and neckerchiefs for pirates, long dresses for wenches and Lacey ruffs for the gentry.