Saucy jokes and risque behaviour are to be expected during the festival season and so it should come as no surprise that The Pump House Theatre Company’s chosen play for Watford Live! should be Alan Bennett’s classic seaside farce Habeas Corpus, bristling with mistaken identities, fake boobs and raging libidos.

Not without a certain amount of irony, director Alan Cox and I discuss the characters’ names which, in keeping with the spirit of traditional British innuendo, include the pervy vicar, Canon Throbbing, flighty Felcity Rompers and the diminutive Sir Percy Shorter.

Narrating this rumbunctious tale is Mrs Swabb, the cleaner with a name that wouldn’t look out of place in a Happy Families card deck. She’s certainly a stick of rock and loves to gossip while she ‘does’ for the well to do household of amorous ageing GP Arthur Wicksteed. Arthur’s wife Murial, meanwhile channels her sexual frustration into countless cakes and pots of jam for the Women’s Institute.

Alan tells me he has wanted to direct the show ever since he saw it in the ‘70s.

Given that it’s a nostalgia piece, do the characters still stand up?

“You could relate to most of them,” says Alan. “They’re larger than life but most people will be able to say ‘oh yes I had an aunt who was a spinster and dressed a bit like that’.

“We’ve decided to set the play back in the late ‘60s at a time when it was taking slightly longer for ideas like the permissive society to filtre through to the suburbs.

“It’s been fun to reproduce the costumes and details of the time, which is far enough away for us to look back on in an affectionate way.”

Set in Brighton, the play evokes an end of the pier show atmosphere with more than one pair of trousers round the ankles. “I wanted to capture the humour of the Carry On films and seaside postcard captions, but because it’s Alan Bennett it’s very cleverly written and more in-depth. There are poignant and sad moments behind the laughter.”

Habeas Corpus comes to The Pump House Theatre, Local Board Road, Watford from Monday, June 15 to Saturday, June 20 at 7.45pm (Sat matinee 3pm). Tickets: 07786 844541 (£7-£9)