I’ve written and performed sketch comedy for a number of years and there is no thrill like listening to an audience laughing at your own jokes. So I decided to put everything I know about comedy into Merry Masquerade. The result, I hope, is what it says on the tin.

I am particularly fond of the scene where my hero, Robin, saves our heroine, Clarissa, who is masquerading as a rustic maidservant, from an irritable swan. I’d had the idea for a swan attack for some time but I had never actually seen a swan in attack mode and I always try to do my research. So I searched YouTube for ‘swan attack’ and found a short video of a just married young couple having their wedding photographs taken by a lake. A swan in the background suddenly launches itself at the bride, taking the hem of her bridal gown it its beak and tugging hard. She runs around in circles with the swan attached to her dress. Frankly, all I had to do was add some dialogue.

I also had fun with Clarissa’s vocabulary. She is in fact a well-born heiress but, in order to escape her step-brother’s odious plan to marry her to his dissolute friend, she passes herself off as a maidservant. The scene is set in Devonshire and when searching the internet I found a wonderful glossary of old Devonshire words and phrases. For example when her mistress, Lady Alderley comes up with a scheme to pass Clarissa off as her niece: ‘Lor!’ cried Clarissa, yielding to the promptings of her baser self once more. ‘I do be comin’ up in the world! Cruel full o’ condudle, I’ll be!’ Other good words are: fitty, bloggy and barra.