The Argus: fringe_2011_logo_red_thumb He became the Million Pound Poet following his £1m poetry recording deal with EMI in 1997, but he didn’t direct an opera in Sicily.

He was asked to be the Texan ambassador to Scotland, but he did not have an affair with Chrissy Hynde.

He did tour with psychedelic musicologist Julian Cope, but did not throw himself off Beachy Head in 2002.

The mythos behind Murray Lachlan Young’s career is as anarchic and unexpected as his new show Cautionary Tales For Children II.

“In modern parlance, the show is ‘childled’, which in other words means it can all go horribly wrong. The key to working with children is that car crashes only tend to happen if the car hits something, so I try to place as few obstacles in the way of the performance as possible,” he laughs.

Embracing poetry, interactivity, music, dancing and having fun, Young’s show is about not restricting children to sitting in silence, watching.

Whether he’s reciting poems such as Annie McLue – the parable about one girl’s refusal to flush the loo – or the wonderfully devilish The Nine Dead Williams, BBC 6 Music’s poet-inresidence states onstage participation is not only encouraged but expected.

“If you engage with children, they reward you. As any parent knows, you can only shoo children away for so long before they start smashing the place up,” he says.

Following his departure from EMI – the dandy poet persona he created tended to alienate more audiences than prompt applause, as people confused Young’s personality with that of his horrible and arrogant creation – Young found himself at a children’s festival watching performers and thinking “I can do that”.

“I started sitting under a tree reading kids poems I’d written and thinking the children would sit down around me, but they didn’t – they just wandered off because there was a man with an exploding car or a drum workshop going on at the same time,” he says.

“I had to learn quickly to build an incentive – getting them up on stage – and to behave strangely enough that the parents would think, ‘If I try and take them away he might do something to me’.”

In early shows, Young used poetry as a platform to convey important social messages alongside having fun.

Now – having seen enough children’s shows that deal with animal welfare, environmental issues and “being good” – he’s fallen into the Roald Dahl or Horrible Henry school of thought that allows kids to be kids.

“Children are bombarded with that kind of stuff. It has become a box that entertainers have to tick these days – ‘If you’re going to talk to children, you must ram something important down their throats’,” he says.

“I think so much of our own personal guilt is being funnelled into our children that we’re trying to get them to sort it out for us. I’m heading more and more towards insanity and whimsy in my show.

“It’s a good place to let your hair down, rather than letting your hair down and then feeling slightly guilty about the environment.”

* Starts 2pm, £8.50/£6.50, call 01273 917272