Within this bastard's carnival; this vicious cabaret.

Ask me what my favourite books are and I'll earnestly tell you about all the serious, worthy works of literature I adore. I'll happily talk for hours on the subject and the titles I'll quote will be terribly impressive. It's the truth but it's only half the truth.

The same applies with films and tv series. I've got boxsets of the highly respected film directors and some of the most impressive tv series ever made.

I do adore this stuff but again it's only half the story.

Some of my favourite pieces of literature are comic books; some of my favourite films are musicals; and some of my favourite tv series are outrageously camp. Far from this making me a fraud I would argue at great length about the artistic merits of all these art forms next to their more respected contemporaries. I am quite the mincer.

I mention this because of the weekend I just spent watching both the Wizard of Oz, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Glee Rocky Horror tribute (3 times if I'm honest).

I first heard the timewarp at a primary school disco (where I was perhaps appropriately dressed as a girl) but it was years before I saw the film where it belonged. I had just gone with my higher maths class to see the musical Return to the Forbidden Planet and enjoyed it so much I decided to see what else in the genre I could get my hands on. It would be ages before another show would be on so I took to finding film versions and I got myself a copy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It blew my mind. I didn't get it at all but I didn't care. It was just outrageous and the songs made me laugh and smile. I had long been a fan of classical musicals from years of watching them on telly on holiday afternoons but this was something different.

My favourite musical though isn't one of the outrageously camp ones. It's the Willy Russell classic Blood Brothers. I've been to see it about half a dozen times and I end up in floods of tears every time I go. It never fails to shock me as well, which I love. As Willy Russell himself puts it he didn't write the best musical ever but he did write the best last ten minutes of one. I've been to loads of musicals now and they never fail to make me smile.

While I'm admitting such stuff it's probably fine to get out that I do a tremendous karaoke version of Take Your Mama by the Scissor Sisters, including the falsetto bits.Like I said earlier, a tremendous mincer.