Okay let’s stop all this “it’s for the kids” nonsense, few cartoon series around at the moment span the generation gap quite as well as cartoon canine sleuth Scooby Doo and his friends can. Their spooky adventures are up there with the best and have been since Hanna-Barbera put out the first cartoon series towards the end of the 1960s.

Almost five decades on, Scooby and his friends have taken to the stage in a new musical show, and that is where everyone found them at Cardiff’s New Theatre on Good Friday.

The Mystery of the Pyramid featured the gang in familiar territory, on the trail of mysterious mummies in an Egyptian pyramid and facing the wrath of a Pharaoh who threatened to transform anyone who approached his tomb into stone.

Josh Little (Fred) , Julia Cave (Daphne), Louise Wright (Velma), Eddie Arnold (Scooby Doo) and Danny Stokes (Shaggy) breathed life into their cartoon counterparts and successfully pulled the audience’s attention into a whirlwind of slapstick shenanigans and musical choreography.

Echoes of “it’s behind you!” when a menacing mummy appeared unified grown ups and children in their enjoyment. I even passed quite a few parents on the way out with broad grins like they’d just realised a lifelong ambition seeing their cartoon canine hero live on stage, and it was all thanks to those meddling kids!