If Wes Anderson were to turn his hand to epic poetry he would have produced something like this.

But Sarah Cameron had got there already with her fantasmagorical, exuberant, bumptious, naughty, wild and woolly (I mean of the tartan variety) deliciously surreal tale of laziness, gluttony, dereliction of parental duty and, in the end, love.

Part Brothers Grimm, part Norse saga, The Red Chair was told entirely in exhilarating and knowing Scots dialect, and every word was as toothsome as a toasted teacake.

Cameron sculpted an irresistible, modern fairytale world, a world where a man could sit down in his favourite chair and never get up again, honeymooners travelled by Zeppelin (what else?) and long-lost parents in fox furs were dispatched by way of a railway-bridge collapse in a couple of lines.

Alone on a bare stage (save for a circle and a chair) Cameron performed with breathtaking bravura, not to mention endurance: the ballad was nearly two hours in the reciting, supported here and there by Paul Clark’s atmospheric, sinewy score, a couple of rounds of snacks and a valedictory whisky.

Buy the book and devour it at home. A story never tasted so good.

Five stars