WHAT would be a suitable punishment for the thieving idiots who threw a paving slab through a plate-glass window at York Theatre Royal and smashed their way into a donations box, stealing around £1,000 left by theatre-goers?

With luck the police will apprehend these miserable miscreants. If they are caught, the law should take its course. But a parallel punishment might be that the thieves could be locked in the theatre with the audience and cast, and then subjected to humiliation on a pantomime theme.

As a peaceable soul, I wouldn’t suggest violence, not really. But the culprits could have water thrown in their faces, ice-cold please, before being dunked in the traditional tank. This could be followed by a mass assault with those custard pies that never seem to contain any custard.

The thieves could then be clipped on to the stage wires and hauled into the air. Many days feature two performances, so they could be left suspended between shows, to save the bother of lowering and unclipping them.

At the end of the night, panto dame Berwick Kaler could throw a wagon wheel at them. A real one, mind, not one of the cheap chocolate biscuits. David Leonard, who returned this year as the baddie, could turn truly evil rather than just putting on the actorly frighteners.

Audience participation sometimes plays a part in the Theatre Royal pantomime, and I’m sure members of the audience would throw a bucket or two.

As the show closes, the thieves could be dressed in a mismatching array of Berwick’s cast-off frocks, assuming he does cast them off, and made to sing the final song.

And on their way out to the police van outside, they could empty their pockets and put all the money back for the new theatre.

The Theatre Royal panto is a great York tradition. Not everyone is a fan, something you wouldn’t necessarily realise from the general adulation. There are non-converts in this city and that’s fine.

But some of us love this annual bout of silliness (I certainly do), as orchestrated by Berwick Kaler to a script that manages to be fresh each year, while still containing the same jokes, or similar ones at least. “The same old rubbish,” as Kaler says.

Our trip this year to Old Mother Goose – our 15th or maybe 16th Berwick panto – has a story attached. Before Christmas, we were returning on the last bus home after a night out. We walked up the final hill. It was a dark and stormy night, or freezing and blowy at least.

As we headed down the other side, something darted between us, making us start in surprise. It was a little dog running wild, made giddy by sudden freedom and the wind, jumping up, whizzing round, and jumping up again.

There was no one around. Not knowing what to do, we picked up the dog. Should we take the lively, lost thing home or phone the RSPCA? Instead we walked into the pub, carrying the dog.

On asking if anyone knew whose dog it might be, someone at the bar said they had an idea. So we left the lost dog with the barman and we walked back up the hill.

As we reached the top, we saw a man darting around on the other side of the busy road. Shouting against the wind, we managed to attract his attention. It was Berwick Kaler, frantically searching for his lost dog.

We told him we’d found the dog and went back down to the pub, told the story again, then carried the dog back up the hill for a happy reunion. Berwick was kind enough to give us a big shout-out at the performance we attended, telling the story at the end of the show.

As for the thieves, I hope they are caught. I might even be on hand for a spot of audience participation if they are.

The theft from the Theatre Royal occurred the day after a gang used a stolen farm vehicle to tear a cashpoint machine from the wall of the Co-op store in Haxby, taking half the shopfront with it.

By further coincidence, the French cop drama Spiral, which is shown on BBC4 on Saturday, last weekend featured robberies from cashpoint machines.

The pretend French robberies contained less violence to buildings but rather more to the person.