A BEAUTIFUL princess, a baddie to boo, brilliant songs and bad jokes by the bucketful. It must be pantomime season.

Aladdin, showing now at Malvern Theatres, has all the right panto ingredients. Get your kids - or borrow someone else's - and suspend cynicism while you enjoy song and dance routines, crazy costumes and cross-dressing at its best. There are no surprises. This is the traditional panto formula with a sprinkling of TV celebrities to add to the glitz.

An appreciative audience of children, mums, dads, aunts, uncles, grans and grandads clapped, cheered, sang and booed their way through the production. My children, aged eight and five, loved it - especially the corny gags, custard pies and flying carpet.

Family Fortunes host Andy Collins was a natural when it came to involving the audience but for me Aussie actor Alan Fletcher, alias Dr Karl Kennedy from Neighbours, just wasn't nasty enough as panto bad guy Abanazer. My children loved ventriloquist Steve Hewlett and his cheeky skunk, especially the jokes that had adults groaning.

Including hits from popular musicals like Grease and Annie gave the whole production a familiar sing-along feel.

The pops, bangs, coloured smoke and flashing lights that accompanied the genies seemed to entrance younger members of the audience, despite their generation's submersion in fantastic computer game and film graphics.

My children enjoyed the tumbling acrobatics of the dancers and thought the genie of the lamp was like an Olympic gymnast.

But for my youngest son, the star of the show was Slave of the Ring genie Nicole Davis. Forget Family Fortunes and Australian soap stars, she is a presenter on the BBC children's channel CBeebies and that really is something special.

Having seen her face on posters all over Malvern over the last few weeks, he was thrilled to see her on stage.

"It's really Nicole. I like Nicole," he whispered.

Watch Aladdin through the eyes of your children and it really is magical.

The pantomime runs at the theatre until Sunday, January 9. For tickets, call the box office on 01684 892277. Sue Vickers