JOHNNY McKnight whooshes into the room.

In this instance it's the Tron Theatre dressing room, where his Miracle On 34 Parnie Street is sending audiences home with sides so sore they feel an appendix has been removed.

Not content with parodying a film classic, Johnny's department store Santa is in fact Kristine Kringle, replete with Dolly Parton top and Kim Kardashian bottom.

"Once I had the thought 'Santa's a wummin!' I knew exactly where to go with the script," he says in excited voice.

Johnny McKnight does Excited often, and Enthusiastic. And so he should because the writer/director/actor is an art house theatre legend.

He's achieved panto successes at the likes of the MacRobert Centre in Stirling and five-star- reviews for NTS-backed comedies such as Little Johnny's Big Gay Wedding and Oran Mor lunchtime dramas.

However more questions follow the man around than the Pied Piper's kids.

What is there about McKnight that gives him a comedy edge?

How can he write so well for women? Why is it that despite being courted by the major theatres of Pantoland, his creative backside remains in the relative anonymity of 200 seaters?

And why did it take so long for him to realise he was gay, given he once wore Kylie sweatbands to school?

The writer from Ardrossan tells a 20-year-old story which offers some clue, of a time when 17-year-old Johnny was set to attend his first Law lecture at Strathclyde University.

"The night before was my papa's funeral," he recalls.

"And what that means in my family is you get absolutely steamin'. But the next day, I got off the train in Glasgow and a bee chased me.

"Now, I hate bees so I ran away, but I fell, badly. When I got to the lecture, five minutes late, and wearing a wee backpack, three hundred people stopped to stare at me.

"And I realised I'd taken the knees out of baith my trouser legs, the blood was pouring and there were scratches on my arms."

He adds, pausing for effect; "They all thought I looked like a total hing-oot."

Couldn't he have ignored the sneers and carried on? "No," he says, emphatically.

"Years ago, I'd have said I left Law because it was boring. But if I'm being honest, it's because I was really made aware of being working class, that no-one else spoke like me, and I was a total outsider.

"It made me really angry because I went into Law thinking it was about fighting for the underdog. Not a chance! Law is about money, status and technicality rather than fairness.

"I got a sense of this really quickly when I looked around the lecture theatre on the first day and it was full of 17-year-olds with briefcases." His voices rises in mock horror. "Briefcases."

Johnny had grown up playing the role of Outsider. Studying Law and having girlfriends was an attempt to conform. But he reveals he saw no other choice.

"As a teenager, I took the train every week to attend youth theatre in Glasgow, but never thought performance could become a career.

"Don't get me wrong; I was encouraged to go to drama school. But I couldn't see how I would fit it.

"There was nobody, I reckoned, who spoke like me.

"I was too camp, my voice too high-pitched and I never changed my accent."

In conversation he is a delight, part Kenneth Williams wicked and Frankie Howerd clever. Didn't he take a cue from the hugely successful camp icons he'd seen on TV?

"Well, the added problem was I didn't realise I was gay. This didn't dawn until I was 24.

"You see, back in Ardrossan I never heard of a single person being gay. I just thought; 'I'm totally camp - and whit?' Being gay never occurred to me. So I didn't see myself as a Frankie Howerd."

Aged 24, the penny dropped. But Johnny's theatre voice took a while to develop.

After the 'hing-oot' left the world of leather and chrome utility cases he packed shelves in Safeway, and had evening fun in am-dram before working up the nerve to go to drama college.

On graduating, he formed his own theatre company, Random Accomplice, with Julie Brown, creating his own work, writing his own plays.

He's never, ever, been employed.

"I'm a control freak," he says. "And that's maybe why I wouldn't suited to the big theatres such as the King's.

"And to be honest, would they do Miracle On 34th Street? With a female Santa? I doubt it."

Perhaps Johnny McKnight is naturally inclined to be subversive. Perhaps it's because society demanded he conform, and when he couldn't, it pushed him to the margins. Regardless, his view gives him a great comedic perspective. He's also a natural worrier - but without a clue what he'll do in the future.

But does he worry he's as good as his next play? (He'll appear in the Tron in the New Year with And The Beat Goes on, playing the male half of a Sonny and Cher tribute act).

"A' dae panic at times," he says, grinning; "I'm 37 without a career plan. But the way I deal with it is by accepting none of us really knows what's around the corner."

He adds, "I would worry if I didn't enjoy what I was doing. But the truth is having found this life, I love it."

l Miracle On 34 Parnie Street, The Tron Theatre, until January 1.