"We seem to go in for the macabre in bodmin. The previous ‘bodmin Day’ centred on an incident in a rebellion in the 16th century where the mayor of bodmin was hanged. This drew people in - you can attract thousands of people to come and see a mock hanging. It’s an uncomfortable performance, especially as this is a town with a gaol where they did hang people for real not all that long ago.

For many years two local men regularly played the parts of the hangman and his victim, but it needed a special combination of skill and trust and there were no new people to take over when they stopped doing it.

Lots of people in the town had mixed feelings about the re-enactment. Leaving aside the actual hanging, it’s a bit odd to celebrate a bit of the town’s history in which not only was the mayor hanged, but an awful lot of the local people lost their lives. It is part of the town’s history, but only a part.

The bodmin Day, which we’ve now revived again, is based on a very ancient historical celebration which people think originated in very early medieval time and possibly before that, with the patron saint, Saint Petroc, actually processing religious relics around the town. A representation of the relics has always been a small part of the event, and that’s something we can build on.

The basic schedule of our Day was that the Beast was hunted through the town, then was captured and put in a cage on the back of a horse and cart and brought slowly through the town to the central square where the final play took place.

The bringing him back on the cart was something no-one thought too much about except that they had to get him from A to B and this seemed a good way of doing it.

But while he was in the cage, lots of local children started shouting "Free the Beast" and it turned into a demonstration - and they were on the side of the Beast. It was totally spontaneous, but it worked incredibly well, so next year we’ll give them some placards!

People’s reactions to the Beast were very interesting - although it was frightening, it was also in some ways endearing, like King Kong. In the middle of the performance a little girl wandered up and stroked it."