John Waters, however, has gleefully pounced on the formulas’ hackneyed conventions for his own purposes: this is both a send-up of and homage to the teen-pic and film.

Ricki Lake’s unselfconscious performance as the all-dancing, all-bouffant Tracy Turnblad is a joy, Debbie Harry makes a fabulous bigot, while Waters seems to delight in the many toe-tapping dance routines as well as his own deliciously arch dialogue.

Hairspray shows that Baltimore is the natural home of twisted legends and gothic subversives: Edgar Allan Poe, Dr Hannibal Lecter … and John Waters.

[John] Waters punctures the prejudice through parody and exaggeration, upending stereotypes and transforming race hysteria into hysterical humor.