Infinite variety at Charleston

Oh, those Bloomsberries: what fun they must have had at Charleston farmhouse snug under the Sussex downs - Vanessa and Clive Bell in menage with Duncan Grant, Lytton and Virginia popping in for tea... Well, maybe not, if you're allergic to the Bloomsbury school of charm. I used to be, but I've changed my mind after years of visits to the anything-goes Quentin Follies.

Instigated nine years ago in memory of master craftsman and author Quentin Bell, one of Vanessa and Clive's two sons, by his textile-designer daughter Cressida, this annual summer jamboree has become a little less ad hoc and a little more professional than when I first did my very amateur bit for it  as pictured below right (the Nightmare Song from G&S's Iolanthe, set idea courtesy of the bed scene in Richard Jones's production of The Queen of Spades). On Saturday afternoon I returned as spectator after a couple of times out, and found it all top notch - or nearly all, and when not, full marks for enterprise, with all services given freely.

Glyndebourne, just down the road, it ain't, but it is fun if you're in the mood to be spontaneously jolly. Mine not the right to praise or blame the acts, but I'll just give you a sample of what tickled or touched us on Saturday night. First up, Miss High Leg Kick and Boogaloo Stu in orange wigs performing a Rhumba: my first taste of what I'm told is the new-wave Burlesque very popular in nearby Brighton (don't I sound like an old friend of mine who the other day told me "I've discovered e-mail. It's wonderful, you know"). Then Susannah Waters, whom I remember as the best Cherubino I've ever seen (no kidding), performing a delicious extract from her stage adaptation of infant phenomenon Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters [sic] with Richard Hahlo.

There was a certain Heldentenor - Euroman Jeremy O'Sullivan, a personage not unassociated with myself - treading on his balls, if you'll pardon the expression, to sing Dido's Lament in drag and strong falsetto. There was Booker-nominated novelist Andrew O'Hagan reading Burns's Tam o'Shanter - yes, all of it -  with bagpipe support. There were a striptease to Isolde's Liebestod (sung, not mimed, to boot), Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Brecht and Weill, and professional song-mimicry from Philip Pope.

Top marks for sheer wacky audacity go to Miss Amelia Kallman doing her own singular versions of The Bride of Frankenstein (pictured left by Axel Hesslenberg) and a three-minute King Kong, and to Der Wunderlich Revue for more strip burlesque (two blokes as Bond, Bradford and Bingley). It takes something to shock an audience into silence but one of the duo as Pope Ratz singing "Thank heavens for little boys",  did the trick. And finally, the staples - top comedian Richard Dyball, who brings the house down every year without fail, and the fireworks.

They made a fair bit on the annual picture auction, too, including originals by Maggi Hambling and Duncan Grant, which helps to buy back older artworks for the Charleston Trust. If you haven't been round the house, do visit: you may be pleasantly surprised, as I was, by the charm of the place. I'm now ready to go around wearing an "I Love Bloomsbury" badge - something I wouldn't have dreamt of a decade ago.

• Read how the Bloomsberries anticipated our current liberties in Virginia Nicholson's Among the Bohemians