The King’s Pin first ran over Zoom, then on the radio, before finally making it to the stage. It was well worth the journey. We even had complaints. Apparently, the play contained foul language (entirely true), and was anti-English (not at all). But as a ****ing English author these accusations delighted me.

James IV lies at the root of the piece. An intelligent, but perfidious, monarch who killed his father, moved into the old man’s job and later signed competing pacts: one each with those firm pals, France and England (the latter featuring Henry VIII, known to all as moral rectitude dressed in a codpiece). Had James then not torn up the Treaty of Perpetual Peace – seeing his chance to defeat a smaller English army under Catherine of Aragon, while the big fellah was occupied with a scrap across the channel – there would have been no Battle of Flodden, no decimation of Scotland’s leading families and potentially a different relationship taking shape across the River Tweed.

Far more importantly, there would have been no King’s Pin.  I know!

We would have been denied the directorial skill of Eloner Crawford, whose ideas shaped our actions. We would never have seen the superb Kate Lester play the vengeful witch, threatening to chase her quarry across more than five centuries. Nor would we have benefitted from Kate’s clever idea – and Glen Shepherd’s brilliant execution – of filming the world in the aftermath of James’s defeat, interleaving three cinema scenes with four from the 21st century end game, which were played out on stage.