MY nine-year-old niece turned to me with her eyes shining, as the curtain closed on Dick Whittington, and gushed: "That was really good."

Her unprompted response is probably the best way to sum up Wycombe Swan's panto which clearly delighted most of its young audience at our showing on Sunday afternoon.

For the adults, the show never drags and there's plenty of grown-up humour to entertain you even though some of it is excruciatingly trite.

It is a panto that does exactly what it says on the tin. It is slick, colourful, musical and filled to the brim with cheesey jokes, naughty innuendoes and panto set-pieces.

It also has two major TV stars soap veteran Todd Carty and legendary puppet Basil Brush.

Carty, a star of Grange Hill, EastEnders and The Bill, is the villainous King Rat. Basil plays Alderman Foxwarren, the uncle of the girl Dick Whittington falls in love with on his rags-to-riches road to becoming Lord Mayor of London.

I've previously never been much of a fan of the furry fox, but he does actually conjure up quite a stage presence as he's wheeled around on top of a counter.

His hammy boom boom' jokes are a perfect match for panto and even though they are as old as the hills, they still might make you chuckle.

Example: "I've just found out why the sand is wet," declares Basil.

"It's because the sea weed."

Carty, meanwhile, spends most of his time making dark threats and sinister poses against Dick as he aims to hype up the level of boos and hisses.

His best moment comes when he uses a remote control to carry out an evil plot against Dick. The device makes time rewind before your very eyes, forcing the characters to go backwards and reveal where they have hidden the key to a safe.

But this production also stands out for the performance of its lesser-known stars. Mark Evans (Dick) and Amy Pemberton (Alice) are excellent as the young lovers, while Mark Jones holds the show together well as Winkle the Mate.

Jones is effectively the master of panto ceremonies and he pulls off his job with aplomb, looking like a bit of a mix between Norman Wisdom and Robbie Williams. He has plenty of chance to ad lib when he pulls children onto the stage for sing-songs, and his best gag comes when he earnestly announces a member of the audience has just turned 111.

Moments later, he apologises saying he misread the paper and adds: "She is ill, not 111."

Dick Whittington runs until January 15