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Eventually made it along to see the much acclaimed touring production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when it arrived at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow.

Originally adapted for the stage by Adrian Noble almost a decade ago, it consistently tops friends and colleagues' lists of must see stage shows.

Noble has done a fine job of honing down both the Ian Fleming story and the Roald Dahl script into a much less flabby affair than the film - although at two hours and 20 minutes, it's still a bit of a marathon.

It seems as if everyone who's anyone has had a part to play in the production since it was first staged in 2002. From Michael Ball and Jason Donovan as Caractacus Potts to Wayne Sleep, Alvin Stardust and Richard O'Brien - who was surely made for the role of the Childcatcher (although no-one has quite topped the sinister movements of ballet dancer Robert Helpmann in the original film).

Our show is an unstarry event - and no bad thing for it. Just Barbara Rafferty hamming it for the home crowd and everyone else slick and polished after weeks on tour together. And the star, after all, is the car, and it doesn't disappoint.

There's a collective gasp when it first appears amid a burst of stage fireworks, and again when it takes to the skies.

Soap stars

One night later, and the other end of the theatrical spectrum for a piece of theatre so small, so intimate and so up to the minute, you can perform it standing up in a pub. Westenders, the new live theatre soap is, like most soaps, set in a pub but the difference is that this show is also performed IN the pub.

Creator Ann Marie Di Mambro was inspired by the venue's lunchtime theatre programme - A Play And A Pie And A Pint - to which she contributed. She decided if audiences could turn out every week for a play, they could do the same for a soap.

She's persuaded several of her fellow writers from River City to help, and pulled together a cast of actors - including Andy Gray, Jonathan Watson, Juliet Cadzow, Greg Hemphill and Julie Wilson Nimmo - who've all agreed to take part for next to nothing.

Set in the fictional pub The Pig and the Poke, it follows bar-owner Ruby, aspiring writer husband Rabbie, Ruby's sister Pearl, mum Beryl and others. The pub - like Oran Mor - has a kindly approach to writers and there's even a cameo for writer Alasdair Gray in episode one when he orders a whisky before launching his own book upstairs.

It was standing room only for last night's opener - and despite problems with the sound which meant many people at the back of the pub couldn't hear the show - it looks like it's hooked people in for a few more episodes.

And while there was no obvious cliffhanger at the end of last night's episode, Ms Di Mambro promises a mighty cliffhanger for episode eight (on 10 December). Enough she hopes to persuade someone somewhere to commission a second series.