There is no official list of what you should include in a pantomime.

But woe betide any producer who decides to leave out the cooking scene, with its attendant custard pies.

Or the decorating scene with buckets full of slop. Or the bit where they throw sweets to the audience.

Or when everyone joins in with the song. Or omits the most famous lines ever heard on the British stage.

Which are not ‘To be or not to be’ but ‘Ohhhhhh no he isn’t’ and ‘Ohhhhh yes he is,’ bellowed, of course, at increasing volume before something very funny happens.

Someone who knows this is CBeebies’ Chris Jarvis, lately of this parish and writer, producer and starrer-in of more pantomimes than you can shake Dick Whittington’s stick at.

He’s the power behind this year’s Bournemouth Pavilion production of Aladdin and directs and stars in it as Wishee Washee.

Even with all his experience – this is his eighth year – he says he wouldn’t like to guess how many different components make up a successful pantomime.

“There are so many dynamics, procedures, traditions and catchphrases so as long as you get in a substantial number of them, you’re covered,” he says.

Some pantos, like Snow White, don’t even have a traditional Dame but, he says: “I think you can get away with that so long as you’ve got the right jokes and a good amount of slapstick.”

He believes panto is evolving for the better, away from the traditions of 30 years ago when: “It was dominated by pop stars and shows had to reference chart hits.” Now, he reckons, people are more interested in musical theatre and see panto as comedy with songs, dance and set jokes and traditions.

Chris writes many of his own scripts but claims he just has to tweak scripts from other writers because ‘they are so good’.

“Some of the jokes are years old but they are there because we love them,” he says.

One thing he is keen on is getting the baddie right.

“I was at a performance of Jack and the Beanstalk when, right at the beginning when we heard the first fi-fi-fo-fum even before it started, three children were so scared they had to be taken out of the auditorium.”

His baddie is EastEnders’ Scott Maslen who plays Jack Branning.

“We have a radio advert with him sounding like Jack Branning and then going into his baddie Abanazar voice,” says Chris.

“It sounds great and hits the right note.” Pantomime villains, he says, should have a kind of camp badness about them.

“You have to scare the children but in a safe way.”

And then, of course, there is the Dame. Chris’s is Bobby Crush, playing the Widow Twankey, who is one of a string of actors who specialise in these well-loved parts.

Dames only really got going in the music hall of the Edwardian era but have become the cornerstone of most pantomimes, with their outrageous outfits and double-entendres.

Chris wants as many people as possible to come to the panto this year – his, Poole’s, Weymouth’s or anywhere else’s – because he believes it’s good for us.

“Christmas on TV is the time when soap operas give their characters the hardest time, or kill them off and it can be quite depressing,” he says.

How much more fun to be in a darkened theatre where a man in comedy bloomers is chased by a ghost with a 1,000 people shouting: “He’s behind you!”