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I ask what Christmas was like when he was growing up. He recalls his Catholic mother, now 86, taking him to midnight mass, then sidesteps into an anecdote about Glenn Milstead – the boyhood friend and cross-dressing muse he named Divine – coming to the service in drag. Waters’ stage shows are carefully scripted, delivered from memory, and these rapid digressions come across like a compressed rehearsal of one of his soliloquies.
“I liked Santa but I would get confused as a child whether I was supposed to pray to him or William Castle [the B-movie director], or Jesus,” he says, before skipping to another thought about “living crèches” – Christmas cribs re-created with real people. “They’re begging for Diane Arbus to come back from the grave to take a picture of them. What parent would give their child to be baby Jesus, with straw and candles and mules that kick … ? I’m telling you, I think living crèches are some of the most horrifying things.”

Thinking of Christmas in London, I ask whether Waters has seen any pantomimes. He looks puzzled. I try to explain the genre that combines fairy tales, audience participation and washed-up TV stars in women’s clothing. “Is there scat in it?” he asks.