WHAT do jam sandwiches, trains and the Swiss Alps have in common? They all will feature Pocklington Arts Centre's spring programme.

Live events will span a gritty, taboo-busting medical drama to magical family-friendly puppetry; interactive orchestral music for budding young Mozarts to absurd rail-related comedy.

Director Janet Farmer says: "After a record-breaking 2018 here, we’re really excited to be releasing tickets for our first new events of the spring season, and we can’t wait to launch our main spring and summer brochure next month, with its dynamic programme of live theatre, music and comedy, plus workshops and exhibitions.

"February is already going to be an incredibly busy month for us, with sold-out shows from Jason Donovan on February 4 and 5; Holy Moly & The Crackers on February 16; Fisherman’s Friends on February 17; Steve Harley Acoustic Trio on February 24 and The Searchers on February 27, and we've got much more to come."

The first tickets for new additions to the season go on sale today at 10am, starting with Wait? What? at 1pm and 5pm on March 1, when the Sinfonia Viva Orchestra will present an interactive concert featuring new music written and presented by composer Jack Ross.

Children and jam lovers alike will be delighted that John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway's storybook, The Giant Jam Sandwich, will be brought to life on March 9 at 2.30pm. In this fun-packed show for three to seven year olds, Bap the baker comes up with an ingenious idea to bake the biggest wasp trap ever when one hot summer’s day four million wasps invade the village of Itching Down.

On April 13, at 2.30pm, children aged two to eight can join Oskar’s Amazing Adventure, the Theatre Fideri Fidera show where Oskar the puppy ventures into the Swiss Alps wilderness in search of friendship after being snowbound in his little house on top of the mountain for weeks.

Pipeline Theatre's Drip, Drip, Drip will take its March 6 audience on a breakneck, darkly comic and taboo-busting journey with NHS staff at an overstretched hospital.

In Strangers On A Train Set, Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding's Lip Service Theatre Company will "take a whistle-stop tour that will leave you breathless". Challenging a youth to turn down his music, Irene Sparrow, inventor of the left-handed crochet hook, finds herself under suspicion of murder after the train emerges from a tunnel with the young man dead.

However, this is a Lip Service satirical show, so this is no ordinary train; each passenger is reading a book and each book is a portal into a parallel universe of train-related crime fiction.

Storyteller, poet and BBC Radio 4 regular John Osborne will bring his Edinburgh Fringe, Soho Theatre and Glastonbury Festival hit, John Peel’s Shed, to Pocklington on March 27. The show features a selection of records owned by the late John Peel, many of them rare recordings by obscure and now defunct bands.

Among the music acts, Scottish fiddler Aly Bain and accordion player Phil Cunningham, who have toured together since 1986, will play Pock in March 8; singer, songwriter and founder member of The Zombies Colin Blunstone is booked in for April 5.

The full spring and summer brochure will be out in early February. Tickets are on sale at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk or on 01759 301547.