Christopher Hampson, the man in charge of Scotland’s national ballet, used to make theatre as a child.

In his childhood Mancunian home, the young Christopher would build theatres - sets, stage, proscenium arch and all - from cereal boxes and Lego. He would have scenes set out and stage miniature shows. He knew he wanted to play in theatres, on stages and before real audiences. As he grew up - and trained at the Royal Ballet School - he realised that as an adult he could make a living performing in real, not cardboard or plastic, theatres. And now, 30-odd years later, he is in charge of one of Scotland’s national companies, and one of the leading dance companies in the UK. Three years after arriving in Scotland and joining Scottish Ballet as artistic director, he is now chief executive.

And although the 42-year old speaks with a light Lancastrian accent and spent formative and successful years in London - he was a soloist for English National Ballet before becoming a noted choreographer - Hampson’s ascension to the top job at Scottish Ballet is also a kind of graceful return.

His mother, Jan, is Scottish, from Gourock. His parents met on the street in Glasgow. Summer holidays for young Hampson meant Scotland: The Broons, Oor Wullie and his grandparent’s home in Finnie Terrace, Gourock.

Hampson and I meet at his magnificent Alexander 'Greek' Thomson-designed villa in the south side of Glasgow, about a 10 minute walk from Scottish Ballet’s base at the Tramway venue. Two sleepy greyhounds each have a sofa in a spacious living room. Tanned and fit - he runs marathons - Hampton looks like a dancer: lean, confident, a bright and focussed personality. The 42-year-old happily poses for pictures in his kitchen with the dogs, Callum and Wullie.

Hampson vividly remembers going to the opening of the nearby Burrell Collection and Glasgow’s Garden Festival as a youth. “Scottish Ballet in a weird way is a bit of a circle,” he says. “My mum came to work in Glasgow when she was very young, in Co-Op Insurance. My dad had been posted from Manchester and they met on Buchanan Street. I loved coming up to Scotland, I loved that people spoke differently, I loved that the money was different, different food. I’d get The Broons and Oor Wullie every single Christmas.”

He adds: “Years later, I came in to interview for the artistic directors job - and I didn’t really tell my parents very much about it.” He parents asked where Scottish Ballet was now based and he told them: Tramway on Albert Drive. My mother said:‘Oh my God, that’s where we lived when me and your father first got engaged.’ In some bedsit. Isn’t that odd? It’s bizarre.”

Hampson loves Glasgow: “I’ve always been someone who feels they need to have a sense of perspective on whatever I am doing. I always look to do other things as well: I run, I swim, I walk the dogs, I knit - yes, I knit. Glasgow is a great place to suddenly be out somewhere, doing something different. I know that I can leave that building and I can be out on a hill with the dogs or running somewhere - it’s super.”

The former dancer is a runner, running three or four times a week. Hampson has also completed six Marathon. He ran the London Marathon last year. He has also run marathons in Cape Town, Athens, Paris, and Edinburgh twice.

Hampson is driven and, one senses, relentless. Since he begun his life in dance and theatre - at the age of 3 - Hampson has been successful. He has undergone the journey from dancer, to international choreographer, to artistic director and now a chief executive - with the reins of the company in his hands. He didn’t plan to be a chief executive. He says: “My career has nowhere near been a straight line. It feels like a trajectory but, speaking as a marathon runner, it is one with lots of hills. Lots of hills to climb which are as hard going up and they are coming down. But this appointment has been fascinating. Being chief executive was not on my to-do list ever, it is something that has emerged.”

In March this year, he was appointed as acting chief executive after the former chief executive and executive producer, Cindy Sughrue, stood down, and he was made chief executive in June. Hampson has had to adjust from being responsible from what is on the stage, to everything off it, too. “I get quite a buzz from that, you are able to be creative. If something challenging comes up - it did this morning at a senior management meeting - I don’t get a pit in my stomach thinking ‘Christ, how are we going to do this’, I get buzzy: ‘How we going to do this, how are we going to fix this?’.

Some artistic directors may not want much to do with the business of practical side of running a company, I venture. “That is absolutely true,” he says, “But that is something I have always felt, even as a dancer, even as a student at the Royal Ballet School: I always made it by business to know what was happening in the whole of the organisation. I have always looked at the whole cake and not a slice of it, so in a sense this is a natural progression."

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Hampson, who grew up in greater Manchester, started dancing when he was three.

The “girl down the road” went to ballet, and he had no one else to play with after nursery. “I loved it straightaway, and she left because she couldn’t skip - she know works for Ernst and Young in London - but I can still skip,” he says. “I just carried on." He adds: "What kept me going wasn’t really ballet, it was theatre. And when I was six, Northern Ballet Theatre, in 1979, needed a little boy for Madame Butterfly….” And he took the part. Those pretend theatres had become real. He nods. “Dance was the way in. It was theatre and creating something that was important. It was fascinating to me that adults did what I did, messing about, for a living,” he says. “By the time I was eight or nine I was really getting good at dancing, the grades were coming in, I was getting the bug, and then at 11 I went to the Royal Ballet School.”

That training was physically and mentally demanding, he says. But there were other stresses too. “This was pre-Billy Elliot days,” he notes, “You know? It was tough in terms of the bullying and so on. I didn’t suffer too much. My parents were very supportive. But it meant a lot to me that, while I was at school, the pride I had that I was going that evening, with my mum, to the Palace Theatre in Manchester to perform in a professional production. So I used to go into school and not really give a shit about the bullying.”

Hampson knew he was gay from the “age of zero”. That was another issue, in the 1980s, to deal with. He says: “I don’t ever think I tried to cover up that I knew I was gay. I remember being so excited about going to the Royal Ballet School [in London] because I thought: now I am going to be with other boys who like dance, and perhaps with other boys that like boys.” But he was to be disappointed. “I got there and it was almost worse…in that era, in that generation, it was so ingrained to not be gay. The message was: ‘Do Not Be Gay’. I was the probably the first boy to come out of the closet. I did it at 16. I was out of the closet as fast as can be."

He began a career as a choreographer in his late 20s - stopping dancing at the age of 28 - and that eventually led to his new position at Albert Drive. He says he has short, medium and long term ambitions for the company, which is directly funded by the Scottish Government.

One main aim is “making sure we are on a level with all the other companies worldwide” he says. “We have changed gear in our output, our repertoire is incredibly wide, and much more worldly: I think we can stand confidently in any particular cultural continent in which we pitch our flag.”

And the next chapter? “The next chapter is how we are going to be relevant beyond the stage as a ballet company. I think other institutions have done that quite well, but not ballet companies, and I want us to be the ballet company who do it well.”

He has already up a new section called Scottish Ballet Creatives, with the eventual aim of having an entirely ‘digital’ season. A recent video created with award winning Scottish singer Kathryn Joseph is a taste of things to come.

Hampson, who is also on the board of Edinburgh’s Dancebase, is intrigued by working more with dancers with disabilities, building on recent work with Indepen-dance 4, Scotland's leading dance company for disabled artists.

And, he adds, remaining world-class. “I like the feeling that when Scottish Ballet leaves the stage, the next company on is the Royal Ballet or Americam Ballet Theatre - that feel’s right. But you don’t just get there and coast. We have a 50th birthday in 2019 - what will that company look like then? The exciting bit is the things we have not even dreamt of yet.”

•Scottish Ballet’s Autumn Season, featuring Javier de Frutos’ Elsa Canasta, Bryan Arias’ Motion of Displacement and Sophie Laplane’s Maze, launches at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow on September 24 and will be performed at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, Eden Court in Inverness and His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen from September 29 – October 10. www.scottishballet.co.uk

Questions

Favourite place: Anywhere on a sofa with my two greyhounds

Favourite work of art: Discobolus by Naucydes

Favourite piece of music: Préludes pour Piano by Olivier Messian

Favourite work of dance: Bob Fosse's The Rich Man's Frug from the film Sweet Charity

Favourite meal: Confit de canard aux pommes de terre - it's Duck 'n' Chips!

Ideal dinner guests: My partner

Best piece of advice every received: 'Don't inhale' - Regarding overly positive praise.

Worst advice ever received: 'Inhale' - I was addicted to cigarettes for nearly 20 years.

Holiday destination: Corsica, we've a hideaway there.

Last film you watched/was it any good? American Sniper, it's excellently directed (Clint Eastwood) and has superb performances from Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller.