An award-winning Scottish poet is writing a play about the crimes of Jimmy Savile, a play with pantomime elements that could be staged by the National Theatre in London.

Don Paterson, who recently won the Costa award for poetry for his acclaimed book 40 Sonnets, is writing the work with his partner, the writer Nora Chassler.

Paterson, in an interview published in The Herald today, said that the paedophile and rapist Savile, who died in 2011, was a "psychopath who should have been locked up in Broadmoor."

The play, which is in draft form, concerns itself with one of Savile's many victims.

The writer, based in Edinburgh, said: "It's actually about one of his victims. It’s about the infantilisation of women and sexualisation of children in the 1970s.

"But it's told from the point of view of one of his victims, who is trying to stage a kind of cathartic panto, in Brighton."

The play moves in and out of a traditional pantomime format.

Paterson said he hopes the work is staged in 2017.

He said: "I think panto is really an interesting and uniquely British form, where a lot of these terrible power structures are encoded.

"Some of it is in panto form, and some of it isn’t. It moves in and out of panto-fied tableaux."

Savile is not a major character in the play. He said: "Jimmy is kind of a cypher. He is in it, but he is essentially a cypher.

"Because he was just a psychopath who should have been locked up in Broadmoor.

"He wasn’t the devil; he was nothing – he was just a psychopath.

"He had a traumatic injury as a child that clearly affected his brain, and the real mystery, the real scandal, is why he was tolerated and facilitated. It ties in with the cultural necessity of scapegoats, and those court jester figures, and the role they play for us – as a way of distracting us while other people get away with the same, or far worse. He was an horrific cultural symptom. But he doesn’t deserve any more attention."

Paterson said: "If it all goes well it will be on at the National – but we have a way to go with it. We have a working draft."

The poet, who is originally from Dundee, said he is not interested in being the next Makar, or National Poet, of Scotland.

He said he was not interested "at the moment" in the role recently held by Liz Lochhead.

He added: "There was also something else about Edwin Morgan [the first Makar] and Liz, apart from them being fine poets – they address the issue of Scotland in their work. And both did so brilliantly.

"And it is important that whoever does that next also takes on that too. It’s a role that comes with certain expectations and it would be crazy to take on that role and just not meet them. So for that reason, personally, I think Kathleen Jamie would be great."

Paterson said he is also writing a memoir, which he is half way through, and the Makar role would distract from his work at hand.

He said: "I’ve got other things that I m doing. Right now – though you’d be stupid to say never – it would be a distraction from other things. And also you have got to be honest when you see other people who would do the job far better."