BEHIND all modern forms of entertainment lies the story – and if the story's no good, then the entertainment's no good.

Expectation, suspense, resolution – these are the vital ingredients every story contains.

And stories don't need all the trappings of sets, costumes, make-up, lighting, camerawork, editing, CGI, animatronics.

If you want a monster, you just describe it, in all its filth and stench and ground-shuddering enormity. Storytellers work with their audiences to create emotion and atmosphere, and the audiences discover things in themselves they didn't know were there.

Small wonder, then, that storytelling is a growing art-form.

Slowly but surely, story-clubs are arising all around: Heads and Tales, the story club of the New Forest Storytellers, meets in The Boston Tea Party in Ringwood on the third Thursday of every month.

And Sarum Story Club meets in The Wyndham Arms, Estcourt Road, Salisbury on the second Tuesday of every month. People arrive around 7.45, the storytelling gets going around 8pm, and the meeting breaks up around 10pm.

All these are clubs for adults to tell stories to one another – anyone who comes along can tell a tale, though there's nothing wrong with just listening.

In our lonely on-line world a story-club lets people meet face to face and lets them show each other what's going on inside them. Story-clubs are about sharing experiences, attitudes and values – and also about being surprised, amused and moved.

Come along and find out – there's bound to be one near you.