NOW, you may think we’ve nothing to concern our pretty little heads over. You may be the type to dismiss Britain’s £2.3 trillion debt, the political detritus left by the soon-to-be-ex Prime Minister, the global warming crises . . . Oh, and let’s not forget both Covid and monkeypox, which, like Boris, refuses to go away.

If that’s the case, you have perhaps less need to lose yourself in the musical jukebox show that is Dreamboats and Petticoats.

But for those who crave escape into fantasy and a collection of songs that can’t fail to lift the spirits, this theatre show could be exactly what you need.

Way back in 2008, celebrated writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran came up with the idea for their jukebox musical. Gran says the Dreamboats concept came along at the right time, the world facing the economic crash. “When we started writing the show, we were conscious of the world going wrong,” he recalls.

“People were anxious and feeling the pinch and wondering if the world as we knew it was coming to an end. So, we knew we wanted to write something escapist, and we remembered that during the Depression, people wanted to watch Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1933.”

If that sentiment was relevant 14 years ago, it’s practically vital today. The follow up to the original show; Bringing on Back the Good Times, tells the story of a band, Norman and the Conquests, playing the far from prestigious St. Mungo’s Youth Club and struggling to find a break.

Guitarist Bobby has an additional concern – while he’s stuck in a band that’s going nowhere, his girlfriend Laura is starting out on a more successful career including television appearances, and he wonders if she’s being faithful. But it turns out that she’s agreeing to do a favour for manager Larry in order to get the band a break – performing at Butlins in Bognor Regis.

Yes, the plot is less challenging than an entry level Sudoku puzzle, but there is just enough of a storyline to link the songs, such as You Don’t Own Me, C’Mon Everybody, Blue Moon, Mony Mony and Keep on Running, and a book by Marks and Gran is guaranteed to provide laughs.

Over four decades, Gran and his writing partner Laurence Marks, have fleshed out, debated, argued over and finally agreed on the characters, plot lines and dialogue that emerged as Birds of a Feather, Goodnight, Sweetheart, The New Statesman and Shine on Harvey Moon.

But why did the hugely successful writing partnership – who met as teenagers in a tuberculosis ward – move away from television and into theatre?” Before you know it, your contacts move on, and unless you go and cultivate a load of ex-punks you don’t get the TV commissions,” explains Gran, with a wry smile. “But then theatre came along when Laurence bumped into Alan Ayckbourn who said, ‘Why haven’t your written for the stage?’.”

The pair, both born in the late 1940s, took the playwright up on his offer. “We wrote a play for him, which took us two years and made tuppence. But that didn’t matter because writing for theatre is a labour of love.”

Dreamboats and Petticoats, the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, July 19-23.

Don’t miss . . .The Bush, the story of Seventies Australian housewives who battled to save their local bushland from being developed into a luxury housing estate, crafted perfectly by Alice Cooper. An Tobar and Mull Theatre, July 18.

ABBA, sad to say, have been used and abused in recent times. Politicians seem to think that because they can play with our lives without real consequence, they can take the music of one of the most successful pop groups of all time and use to reposition themselves in the public consciousness.

As a result, is it possible to listen to Dancing Queen without experiencing a horror chill, thanks to Theresa May’s attempt at dancing onto the Tory conference stage in 2018? You’re right. It’s not.

Could you consider playing Winner Takes It All, without imagery of Carrie Johnson’s alleged Abba party blitzing the angry brain? Indeed, Benny Andersson was so keen to separate his music from the Partygate people he claimed it wasn’t an ‘Abba party’, but a ‘Johnson party’.

And across the pond, former US secretary of state, the late Colin Powell was said to have gone down on one knee and sang all of Mamma Mia to the Swedish foreign minister, Ann Linde, in front of a ‘gob-smacked US delegation.

But although many of Abba’s titles lend themselves wonderfully to the personal traits of so many political leaders – SOS, Money Money Money and Gimme Gimme Gimme, for example – try and push that aside when you take in Mania: The Abba Tribute.

Direct from the West End, Mania is regarded as the world’s number one Abba tribute show. And the band managed to write more than a few songs that haven’t been appropriated by politicians.

The Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, July 23