#transcribed audio

PE: We did the first studio task and before the curtain came up I was stood up next to Reece and he was like, "Oh, it's so iconic, isn't it?" And I was just like, "You’re iconic." (laughs) I was going, oh, right, but we're all in the same boat. We all realised... we are all nervous. It's not just me. Which was really comforting. And Reece is very… Really comfort- In the show... You probably don't- It doesn’t get shown so much, but he's very, like, reassuring. He's always tapping if you do something good.

MJ: Yeah.

On savait tous que tu étais un espion. (We all knew you were a spy.)

Votre sang a sali mon costume. (Your blood has dirtied my suit.)

Je peux t'emprunter ton oreillette? [mimicking Scout] “Ici Scout! J'aime bien les p'tits chats! Over!” (Can I borrow your earpiece? [mimicking Scout] “This is Scout! I love little cats! Over!”)

Mais c'est... Oh My God! (But this is... Oh My God!)

Vous me dégoûtez. (You disgust me.)

Viens tenir ce point, pauvre imbécile! (Come hold this point, poor imbecile!)

Si vous ne tâchez pas mon costume, je promet de faire vite. (If you don’t ruin my suit, I promise to be quick.)

Jaraté? Nooooooooon! (Jarate? Noooooooooo!)

J'apprécie, docteur. (I appreciate it, doctor.)

Bon voyage, bricoleur! (Happy travels, handyman!)

Mille mercis, my friend. (Many thanks, my friend.)

Quel nul! (What a loser!)

[Short laughter]

[Griffin’s “uhh”s deleted for readability.] 

Griffin: “There’s only one guard standing watch at the hangar, the night shift, the graveyard shift; and it’s your old pal Avi, who gave you the brandy when you first arrived here.”

Justin: “Avi!”

Griffin (imitating Justin’s cadence) “Avi! And he’s like,      Avi: “Hey, guys, what’s up?”

     Magnus [hoarsely]: “Avi I’m real fucked up.”

     Avi: “Oh, dang, what— what happened to this guy?”

     Merle: “Oh, hair of the dog that bit him.”

     Avi: “You’re not really supposed to, like, get on one of these if you’re— I mean, I won’t tell—”

     Magnus [loudly, interrupting] “I’ll be fiiiine~”

     Avi: “Okay...”

[Clint and Justin laughing]

     Avi: “You kind of sound like some kind of wolf-man.”

     Magnus (softer voice, hoarsely): “It’s totally coooool, dude.”

     Avi: “Why are you— why is it whisper time now?”

     Magnus: “Shhhhh.”

     Avi: “Okay. Uh, you guys—”

    Magnus: “Avi. Avi. Avi. Avi. You’re great.”

    Avi (laughs): “Thank you! Yes, thank you?”

Clint: “You’re his best friend.”

     Avi: “I think you guys are pretty— ”

     Magnus: “I think you’re a cool duuuude.”

     Avi: “Yeah.”

[Clint and Justin wheezing]

     Magnus: “Avi?”

     Avi: “Yeah?”

     Magnus: “Do you wanna go on a mission?”

     Avi: “I can’t, I’m not. I can’t. It’s my job to—”

     Magnus: “Okay, we’ll meet you down there.”

     Avi: “Well, I won’t be able to—”

     Magnus: “Avi. Be cool for two seconds.”

     Avi: “I think I’m being pretty cool.”

     Magnus: “Just. Avi. Shhhh. Be cool for two seconds.”

[Clint and Justin laughing louder]

     Magnus: “We’ll see you down there.”

[more laughter]

     Avi: “I won’t—”

     Magnus: “Don’t. Shh. Avi. It’s a secret mission. Shhhh. We’ll see you down there. Wink. Wink. You’re a cool dude.”

[Justin and Clint absolutely losing their shit]

Justin: “Can I get clarification— did he just wink or say ‘wink’ out loud?”

    Magnus: “Both.”

MB: I was once in the audience of a play at the Donmar Warehouse. Which - which I don't know if anyone's been. It's tiny. It's really small. And it's in the round. And a woman's phone went off. And obviously everyone around is going "tut tut tut." And she answered it! She was, "I'm in the theatre!" It was extraordinary.

RH: That's what happens as well - you've done this, haven't you? The Inside No 9, the stage show.

MB: Yes! So brilliant!

RH: They start- they start with this brilliant, er…

MB: Yes!

RH: Brilliant thing. You think it's going to be a scene and it's quite long and it's all about the things-

MB: It’s SO good!

RH: …not to do in the theatre. But it's- one of them is talking on the phone [mumbles].

MB: Everybody's fantasy of what would happen to YOU, my good friend!

RH: But I had it once in Edinburgh - I must have told this story before - but I was doing Christ on a Bike and it was my first, like, proper solo show. And someone's phone rang and it was again, right there, it was, like, in the round, and it was right there, and the phone was ringing and it was really- And I start- I was trying to talk through it, as we were there, and then it just kept ringing and I said, "Is it your phone?" to this guy. And he went "No, it’s not my phone!" And this guy was going "No." And then so we managed to find the phone and it WAS his phone.

MB: Amazing.

RH: And, and I was so angry with him, I just threw on the floor and it broke into- just spectacul-

MB: Wow!

RH: It was one of those old phones, just- It was 2001. Nokia. Threw it on the floor. It just exploded into three bits.

MB: See, that would get a lot of press now.

RH: Yeah, it would!

MB: There would be headlines about the... aggression

RH: But I was amazed because when the audience went gasp and then they went, "Yes!" Honestly and there was this round of applause, it was a brilliant- And then this guy said, "Wha- what are you doing? What you doing?" And I said, "You said it wasn't your phone. It's alright. It's not your phone. Don’t worry about it."

MB: Hah! I've just remembered that I was there at the birth of a detail of that-

RH: Right

MB: Inside No 9 thing.

RH: Oh were you?

MB: Reece and I went to the press night of a show called Machinal at the Old Vic, which was an incredible show and- but a really, really brutal drama. And sort of based on a true story and really political and very, very serious. And tragic. And someone's phone went off. We were towards the back of the auditorium. So I'm sure loads of people towards the front didn't know it was happening.

RH: Right

MB: And the actors carried on. They probably couldn't hear it. But we were right towards the back so we could hear it. Someone's phone went off and the ringtone was the Indiana Jones theme tune

RH: [laughs] That is, isn’t it? That’s what they use.

MB: der der der… Is that the one?

RH: [sings the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme]

MB: Incredible. And then it would sort of - In the way those ringtones do - it would stop at a certain point and then start again from the beginning.

RH: Yeah!

MB: And it just went on for so long. Everyone's looking round, going… No one wants to own- And of course you don't want to own up to it because you've got a fucking ridiculous ringtone! It's going off at the back of the Old Vic! But that's the ringtone-

RH: That is the ringtone!

MB: That Reece chose-

RH: Wow

MB: -for that scene, yeah.

LP: But first the day I am turning to two other storytellers, masters of dark comedy. For fans of the cult BBC television series, Inside No 9, the news that stars Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith had made a theatre version was very warmly met. Indeed the play enjoyed a sold out West End run earlier this year and was nominated for an Olivier Award. The show Inside No 9 Stage/Fright, is now on tour and is coming to Edinburgh's Playhouse at the end of the month. I caught up with Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith a few days ago and I asked them on behalf of anyone who missed the series over the past 10 years to explain the premise of Inside No 9.

SP: Well, it's an anthology series. Which means every episode is different - and we decided we would just link them by having a door with a number nine on it and that could lead you anywhere. It could lead you into a hotel room, could lead you into a big fancy house, a caravan, all kinds of different places. And in the way that an anthology series kind of offers up different things every week we decided to mix up genres. So some of them are scary, some of them are funny, we did a silent comedy, we've done psychological thrillers. So it really is a pick'n'mix that you don't know what you're going to get every week. The only factor that's the same is that myself and Reece have written every episode, and we're in every episode, and it has our trademark humour... and a little bit of a twist ending.

LP: And I'm wondering what is it about this kind of anthology format that really lends itself well to the kind of storytelling that you want to do?

RS: Well that's a good question because it's hard. Each week we were beginning with a new world, a new set of characters, and a beginning, middle, and end. So it's a hard thing to do. You set yourself a lot of challenges doing that. There's not much time to drag the audience into the story and get them hooked. But that was the sort of, um, that was the great thing about it as writers because we had the opportunity for 10 years to try out so many different types of story - and storytelling - and in fact just the very idea of telling stories with the medium of television. We began to play with that, even. You know, the idea of the transmission breaking down, and the fourth wall, and me and Steve being in it as ourselves. And we did lots of... What you would, I think, would be sort of experimental things with like Steve says the silent episode and we did one that was reverse chronology. So it was a fun thing. It was a great pallette for us as writers to explore different- tonally different things.

LP: When you wound up the show, I have to ask, did you always know that you wanted to bring it to the stage?

SP: Uh yeah, we had talked about that from an early- from series one. I mean in many ways this idea came from the stage. We both were doing stage shows at the time. And we'd done an episode of Psychoville, which is our previous series, which all took place in one room with three characters.

LP: Mmm

SP: And it was the money-saving exercise for the TV show. And we just really loved that concentration on one story - the same way you would get in a theatre. You'd get one set, one cast, and tell that story from beginning to end like Reece said. So we always knew it would work well on the stage. But having said that, we haven't just presented you with, you know, like three or four episodes from the TV show. If you come and see the live show, you maybe will see some familiar elements from the TV show, but three quarters of it is brand new material. And because we have a love of theatre we've made it about theatre. And we've made it about live performance. So it's not just a retread of a TV show. It's, hopefully, something that's really alive and in the moment in that theatre.

LP: Well, I'm just thinking of theatre in relation to your own creative journeys. I mean, League of Gentlemen began on stage. You've both got hundreds and hundreds of credits to your name when it comes to treading the boards. Now, you're bringing Inside No 9 there. What is it about the theatre that you think lends itself so well to storytelling in general, but also to your work specifically?

RS: Um... Well as Steve says, yes, we, you know, we sort of started out on on the stage with our live shows in Edinburgh, which is where it all started really. We did a few shows in London, crafted our "Best Of" that became our hour-long show for the Edinburgh Festival in 1996.

SP: Fringe Festival.

RS: Fringe Festival.

SP: We have to say.

LP: (laughs)

RS: And from there, that was where we sort of developed a lot of the characters that became the TV versions of that show and and The League of Gentlemen was born from there. So, I think that we are- we're very comfortable on stage and I think that's why we've- it wasn't a big leap to think that these stories and these half hours could be- would suit a live version. And I think one of the hard parts was that Inside No 9's never been one thing. It's lots of stories and lots of different worlds and how do you, sort of, do a version that honours that and, sort of, gives you that as an audience member or a person that might like the live show? What do you get? And I guess you... Our thought was we have to sort of do a few different strands of different stories and then somehow as a whole give them an evening that feels satisfying and it's all, it all comes together with all the strands that we've been- that seemingly are disparate. You've got to, sort of, arms around the whole thing. And you feel satisfied at the end. And it was just the joy of being able to do lots of different characters. We don't do as many as we did when we did League of Gentlemen, but it feels like it is a- for us it's quite a frantic night of changing costumes and wigs and becoming different, um, for different scenarios. And I think the theatre - when it's done right - is thrilling because you get that, you know, it's there in front of you. It's not- you're not sitting watching a TV thing that's edited. So we had a lot of challenges with the visuals of how we wanted to do some things. We knew we were not afforded the edit of, and the tricks of, television. So you embrace the theatricality of it and there's a lot of old school illusion and magic effects in the show that we really enjoy doing. There's a lot... There's some gore which also comes into it in the second half particularly.

SP: But it's the comedy, isn't it? It's - doing comedy on TV is really hard. You don't get an instant reaction. You do you make a lot of it in the edit. And doing comedy on a stage, which we found from League of Gentlemen onwards, it's the purest form of doing comedy. Because you've got that interaction with the audience and you're getting the instant result from whether you, whether the audience find it funny or not.

LP: And it seems like there's a common thread running from the TV to the stage of trying to push boundaries and take risks and, you know, subvert the genre. And another thing, you know, obviously that connects the two is your creative partnership with each other. I mean, you've collaborated together so many times. What is it about working with each other that makes it such a fruitful and enjoyable enterprise for the two of you?

RS: I've no idea.

(all laugh)

RS: I mean, I think it must be... Yes, like you say, it's such a long collaboration now that we are very comfortable in silence. Because a lot of the time thinking of things, you know, you do sit in silence, just mulling things over. And that I think you might be- if you- if it was a new partnership, you might be tempted to feel like something's going wrong with that- with that thinking time.

LP: Mmhmm.

RS: So I think we're now quite comfortable just thinking we can do it. It's took us a long time to think that we are capable writers and we don't beat ourselves up as much about "our process" if there is one. I mean, there sort of isn't one, really. We talk like there is a set thing and you do this, and you do this, and you get this. But it's not really ever like that. You know you have the germ of an idea and you explore it and interrogate does it have legs to be a story. This is all to do with Inside No 9, really, because that was a lot of turnover of storytelling. A lot of [it] came out of odd little nuggets of things that we might have read or seen or even experienced. And then it was like, "Is there a story in that? Could there be a whole episode about a man that finds a one shoe on the floor? Is there a story in someone wanting to pay the bill in a restaurant?" Tiny little moments that become absurd because you focus really in on the detail of it and take it to the most extreme event that could possibly be in that. But keep it real. Somehow keep a lid on it and keep it believable. So, but- and I guess we are just attuned to each other's taste and we're different in what we think is funny and we'll argue about a line or a word being funny or a big plot point being funny, but we're very happy to defer, I think, and it just seems to work so we don't really try to put too much of a spotlight on what it is that seems to be the winning formula for us.

LP: And do you think there's, sort of, one thing that you might have learned from each other that's fed into your creative practice? Because when two people work together for so long, inevitably you pick up different traits or skills from each other. What do you think you're gleaning from each other's work?

SP: I think it's really just that sense of collaboration and being able to filter your ideas through somebody else and get an instant affirmation of whether it's a good idea or not. I think probably I would be more... I love the writing and I love, sort of, maybe sometimes overintellectualising and Reece will go "No no no that's... doesn't make sense" or "That's not funny" or... I think- and you have a really good instinct for what, you know, what's going to hit and what's going to be funny in the moment and- but we we've never really broken it down like that.

RS: Yeah.

SP: I mean we don't we don't go away - some writing partnerships go away and write separately and bring our ideas together. We do everything in the room together.

RS: Yeah. And a lot of people that do write in pairs - and I've spoken to a lot of people over the years - and they all do that. They all write a version of the scene they might be looking at separately and then bring it together and look out and sort of cherry pick each other's best bits. But we are in the room literally for everything. Which is, I think, unusual from what I gather from speaking to other people. There are a few things that maybe are unique to us because we are going act in it and we write it

LP: Mm

RS: That help it along the way I guess.

LP: Amazing. Reece, Steve, thank you so much for speaking to me today. I really appreciate your time.

RS: Thank you, not at all!

SP: Thank you. Looking forward to coming back to Edinburgh where it all started for us.

As previously mentioned, we began with a compilation of clips of Steve's work: TLOG S1 (Local Shop sketch), Benidorm (beef curtains), Whitechapel (S3 trailer), IN9 (La Couchette), Steve & Reece being presented with IN9’s last BAFTA by Sian & Rosie (<- I've only just twigged they have the same initials!), The Interrogation of Tony Martin, TLOG anniversary specials (Pauline - who got a big cheer from the crowd!), IN9 (Tears of Laughter)

The host, Wayne Imms, said "Welcome, Steve Pemberton!" and then the man himself took the stage and gave us his politician's wave.

And then, of course, he couldn't resist a lil joke...

WI: Yes, they’re all local people. Actually, no this isn’t just an event for local people, of course. Thank you for coming, Steve. It’s a great honour to have you here.

SP: Oh, thank you for having me. We owe a lot to Brighton.

WI: Yes, of course. Can you briefly tell the audience for those who don’t know?

SP: Uh, yeah. When we started out, the first ever gig we did as the League of Gentlemen was at the Komedia Theatre. The smaller, cooler one before it moved into its bigger premises. And we decided pre-Edinburgh to come and test our show out. And we did, I think, three or four nights here at the Komedia. And Jeremy Dyson - who’s the member of our team who writes but doesn’t perform - he heard that there was a wishing stone in Rottingdean. I don’t know if anyone knows it but it’s embedded into the wall of the church. So we decided to come and - before we went to Edinburgh in 1996, 30 years ago - that we would go and we would make a wish and we all put our hands, the four of us, on this wishing stone. In fact, it took us a while to find it and we wished- Well, we all made a silent wish. I wished that in 30 years’ time I was going to be on the pier... In Horatio’s... With a man called Wayne.

SP: Anyway, we made our wish and we were walking back through Rottingdean High Street and Mark spotted, in the window, these fossils. He’s a big, sort of, amateur paleontologist. And we went into this shop, little tiny shop in Rottingdean. And the woman was literally behind the counter - there’s four men walking in. Young! With baseball caps on - and she was looking at us like we were going to steal something. And we stayed about 5-10 minutes in this shop. And the moment we walked out, we went, "Ooh, there’s a sketch in that!" Someone who has a shop but doesn’t actually want you in it because she got so suspicious. So that gave birth to the League of Gentlemen. So if we hadn’t come here 18 years ago… we wouldn’t have had the local shop for local people.

WI: How did the character of Tubbs come about? Obviously inspired perhaps, but you know, this is at least an exaggerated version of that woman. Or was she really like that?

SP: No, she wasn’t like that at all. No. It was a kind of… We kind of pictured like a farmer’s wife. So when we were doing it for the TV- On the stage, we used to just perform in black tuxedos and we’d have one prop or one piece of makeup for each character because we had to change so quickly between characters. So when we were doing the show in Edinburgh - and indeed when we came back to the Komedia - we used to have sellotape. Me and Reece would sellotape our noses up. I don’t know where that came from. It was that thing of being the farmer’s wife, I suppose. Imagining pigs somehow. So I used to put a headscarf on and sellotape.

SP: We had about 15 bits of sellotape hanging up backstage cos it never went up first time! And we then graduated to wig gauze when we did it on the TV. So the wig gauze, very fine, would be glued from here and pulled up. And yeah when we moved to TV we suddenly had to decide what these characters looked like. How we were going to use costume, how we were going to use makeup to bring these characters to life. So it was really difficult to kind of take a character like Pauline, for example, that we’ve just seen, which was just me in a pair of Christopher Biggins glasses going ‘okey cokey pig in a pokey!’ and decide what does this woman actually look like?

SP: So we tried lots of wigs on, lots of different costumes.... But they were never drag characters they were just characters. That’s how we saw them. So in terms of Tubbs, yeah, we just found that when we did one sketch that the audience responded very well and we decided to write more for those characters. And that’s how the League of Gentlemen characters were born. It was just doing shows in places like this where people would come back a month later and they wanted to see the same characters in different situations. And we found that by the time we went to Edinburgh and then we eventually got a TV series, we had enough material for each of the characters because we never stopped writing for them.

WI: We’ll obviously come back to the League of Gentlemen, but before that - years before that - you worked for Variety magazine didn’t you? In some capacity.

SP: I did. Yes.

WI: The sort of, for those who don’t know this, the sort of mainly American film-related magazine, which is really big and all that kind of thing. So was it because film was a big interest of yours?

SP: Well, I was very lucky basically. I moved to London having done a tour of Germany -  schools, theatre in education. Very Legz Akimbo. Where you go around from school to school, you put your own set up, you do a show in Simple English. And that was the first job I got out of college. And decided to then move to London because that’s what you had to do back in the day. Nowadays you can live anywhere, I think, as an actor. There’s stuff happening all over the place. But back in the sort of early '90s you definitely had to make that move. And in order to just have some money, I went to different temp agencies on Oxford Street and handed in my CV. Which had one credit - which was theatre in education in Germany. But I wanted to do office work rather than pub and restaurant work.

So yeah, I was very, very lucky. There was one - one person said they would be needed, like, someone to make the teas and coffees in this office and deliver faxes. That’s how long ago it was! And it was for Variety newspaper. And I got in there and I just absolutely loved being around these reporters. I loved the jobs they gave me to do which were like looking at, you know, collating all the film reviews that week: What had been a hit, what hadn’t. And they knew I knew my stuff, a little bit about film. And I ended up staying there on and off for about 12 years. All through League of Gentlemen. So that was my day job. And they would let me- give me time off to go and do Edinburgh and stuff like that. But I was very, very lucky to have that income because you need… Over the 10 years we spent, you know, working on on stuff, the League of Gentleman… We went to Edinburgh in '96 and I think I moved to London in 1990. So that’s six years' worth of not really getting paid very much, but at least I had something coming in.

WI: Were there any particular films or TV series that influenced some of your later work?

SP: Absolutely. I mean talking about the local shop, The Wicker Man was a huge favourite of mine and that came out in 1973 with two other great movies. Don’t Look Now. And Theatre of Blood. Theatre of Blood in particular, if you’ve never seen it, it’s a really sort of amazing horror film with Vincent Price. And he’s a hammy sort of Shakespearean actor who decides he’s going to bump off all his critics who gave him bad reviews. It’s brilliantly funny, brilliantly macabre and he walks that tight rope of of comedy and horror. And I think that’s something that- and then the other two movies were just… were horror films but more psychological horror films. And they both had endings that really left you shocked and these twist end- not twist endings, but endings which left you agog, just staring at the screen. So I think those three films for me, the fact they all came out in the same year and I probably watched them on TV when I was a little boy. Probably... You know, 11, 12 years old. I shouldn’t have been watching that type of stuff! But it’s those kind of passions and interests that you you carry through into your writing I think.

WI: The Wicker Man is such a really, I think, great film and I think it’s on the iPlayer at the moment so if you haven’t seen it or want to watch it again, so. Any TV shows? Were you big TV watchers?

SP: Oh yeah! Yeah. I mean, of course back in the '70s when I was growing up, you watched what was on. There was none of this "deciding." You know, you had a choice of three channels and you watched, you know, all the great comedies - as John was talking about - The Two Ronnies, Are You Being Served? Whatever was on, you watched it! But I do remember when The Young Ones came on. I remember Not the Nine O’Clock News. I remember these shows exactly as John said, feeling that they were for me. And that something had shifted and changed. I was a bit too young for Monty Python, but The Young Ones, Not The Nine O’Clock News, I found them really... Just something so different and and it’s that thing of breaking the mould. But Victoria Wood was a huge influence. I absolutely adored her stuff and the plays of Alan Bennett and because I’m from Northern England, you know, you heard people speaking the way you heard them on the TV, the same way you heard them speaking at home. That was a big influence as well.

WI: So, how did you meet the the rest of the team who were also part of the League of Gentlemen? Jeremy, you touched upon. Mark Gatiss, of course, and Reece Shearsmith. How did you all bump into each other?

SP: We all went to college together. A place called Bretton Hall in Yorkshire. And It was somewhere you went to do a degree in Drama rather than deciding to be a full-on actor. I think if you go to RADA or Central the idea is that you’re going to train purely to be an actor and at least doing a degree I felt I had something to fall back on. And thank God I did because that’s where we all met. Me and Mark were in the same year and we immediately clicked and bonded over having to be a tree or whatever he was that we had to do... We found each other very funny. And Reece was in the year below. And we all worked out that we’d all skived off from Bonfire Night in 1979 to watch Carry On Screaming on the TV. We traced it back. We actually found the TV Times for that year and we all went, "Yeah, we all decided not to go to the bonfire 'cos we wanted to watch that film!" So, it’s these threads of comedy and horror that we all were fans of. 

WI: So the League of Gentleman of course it was a stage show, it was on the radio, and then TV came along. Did you feel it was kind of evolving through those processes as it were? Becoming… well I guess it did. You know, it evolved into the TV show. So the characters that we saw on screen - were they particularly different from the original idea?

SP: No, not really. And I think that’s that’s testament to the producers that we worked with. We’ve had a great masterclass talk tonight, if I can say that, from John, about producing comedy. And we were incredibly lucky to work with brilliant producers at the BBC. At the time there was Jon Plowman, there was Geoffrey Perkins, and there was Paul Jackson. And they were all at the BBC at the time. They all championed us. And we’d been spotted in Edinburgh in 1996 where we’d taken ourselves. We had no financial backing from anybody.

SP: We drove up in Jeremy’s Mini with a little plastic bag of cassette tapes that was going to be our incidental music. And really not a clue what we were doing. But at the end of that festival, we had a little pile of business cards of people who were interested in working with us. One of those was from a producer called Sarah Smith at the BBC. And then this incredible thing happened. This, you know, we did another couple of shows in London and the BBC took a massive risk on us and they gave us a bi-media deal. Which was basically we got a radio series and a TV series commissioned at the same time. And so we knew that we could learn our craft a little bit through writing a radio series. And then we knew we had a full TV show that we could make for BBC 2. So an incredible act of faith from these untried and untested upstarts From The North.

And then we made the first episode of the TV show separate to the rest of the series so that we could find out what we enjoyed, what we liked, how we wanted to film it. We thought maybe we wanted to film the whole thing with an audience because that’s what we’d been used to. And in the end we did a mixture of single camera and studio stuff. And we carried that on through The League of Gentlemen. 

But the characters themselves were what you saw on stage in 1996.  What you saw at Komedia in 1996. They were the same characters. And I think it came on TV fully formed because we’d done so much work on it. And I think that’s why it was, I think, a success. It’s because it was unlike anything else. And it hadn’t been shaped by anyone outside of the four of us. We had no interference from anybody at the BBC. And I know that’s not always the case, but we were incredibly lucky. And we were backed by producers who just said, "We think these guys are good. Give them their hands [??]. Let them have- let them do what they want."

The only thing was with Herr Lipp… Jon Plowman just said - and this is in one note in about five years working with him - "How old’s the boy?"

SP: Yeah, we got away with quite a lot! But it was- it just straight away it hit a chord with people. It was amazing.

WI: Do you think that- Did you intentionally put in catchphrases? Because that, like, The Fast Show, which was a couple years before, you know, earlier and later comedies are known for catchphrases, you know. Is that something that you intentionally put in for people to remember?

SP: Not really. I mean, because we developed the characters over a series of live events then we kind of knew what the audience had responded to. And I think this is how catchphrases are born. But I genuinely think it’s an audience who takes a - who creates a catchphrase. It’s not - you can’t spoon feed them. I mean a great case would be the character of Papa Lazarou who was only ever in one episode of the League of Gentlemen in the second series and he only once said "You're my wife now." And that was taken up by the audience. It wasn’t that we repeated it eight times in that episode!

WI: Sure.

SP: So it was part of comedy at the time for sure. And we definitely used local shop and stuff like that. But in other sketches, no, we just… We didn’t try to forcefeed- We didn’t want it to be... the characters to be one dimensional. It was really important, I think, for for us that the characters had many layers to them.

WI: Yes. And also it’s like... despite, perhaps, some appearing grotesque, you cared for them. Even Pauline, you know? There was… they were developed and there was empathy from the audience and all that kind of thing. I guess that’s something you wanted.

SP: Yeah, definitely. I mean, Reece hated that. Because Pauline was quite clearly a monstrous character who was belittling the people she was supposed to be helping. And we’d done two or three sketches. There was one about -  she’s trying to teach them how to sell The Big Issue because she’s given up on them ever working. And so we'd done a couple of sketches and I said to him, I said, "I think it would be really interesting to turn the tables on Pauline." And we did a sketch which was about roleplaying. So Ross interviews Pauline - Reece’s character Ross interviews Pauline, and he gets his own back and he becomes the bully in a way. Ross is bullying her. And you see her, you know, you see her crumble, you see cracks in her personality from being this very dominant figure. And I think that was a real breakthrough moment and you could- When we did it live, you could really sense the audience falling a little bit in love with Pauline.  And so definitely I pushed that 'cos it made Reece really cross. 

WI: Another thing with this - there’s catchphrases, but another appealing thing people like it’s the voices of these characters as well. It’s kind of like impressions. People like hearing impressionists. They could just mimic a voice of a well-known person and then people find that funny. Whether that’s actually saying something funny or not, if you see what I mean? And it’s the same with characters who are created in comedies. They just do the voice and that’s enough for some people isn’t it? And I guess you probably had that a lot in your life with, "Oh! Oh, can you do the voice of…" you know, whoever it might be? And, you know, that’s probably, you know, people get that a lot, like, you know, famous actors doing certain characters. But do you have a favourite character out of all those you played in The League of Gentlemen?

SP: I mean, I do genuinely love all of them, but Pauline, I think, has got to be my number one favourite character. Just because of the complex sort of, you know, range I got to do with her. And it’s - to play a character that’s so far away from you, as well, is really nice. But we played about 20 or 30 characters each over the course of The League of Gentlemen. And yeah, in terms of the voices... I mean the brilliant thing about starting doing sketch comedy on stage is that you can’t rely on anything other than your voice and your posture. And you have to differentiate if you’re going to play 10 characters over the course of an evening. You know, if you’re making them proper character comedy, you have to differentiate these characters. So immediately for Tubbs, I knew just something like this... "Yes?"

SP: And I remember when Reece did Pam Doove the actress he’d sort of clutch his arm as a nervous sort of young actress.

SP: And for Harvey Denton: "Like a toad." You know...

SP: So you only had your physicality. You had no costume and, like I say, one piece of costume for each character. And I think that was so helpful for us as performers to see that we could create these characters in the audience’s eyes without changing and doing full makeup and costume. 

WI: One more League of Gentlemen question from me - at least for now. Do you remember when you became aware of its popularity? It would have been while it was on TV and all that kind of thing. But when did you- was there a moment when you thought, "Wow, we made it," or "This is a success," or something like that?

SP: I think we did a tour having done tiny tiny theatres in Edinburgh that makes this look like the Palladium. I mean, obviously some of the - I don’t know if you’ve been to the Edinburgh Festival, some of the venues are as big as this, you know, sort of... (indicates the stage) So, having done theatre shows to begin with three people, then 10 people, but maximum 40 people. We took it on tour after it had been on the television. And there was a scene where Tubbs and Edward  kind of floated up from the ruins of the local shop with big angels' wings.

And we were on a wire so we came up and floated above the shop. And this was pre Twitter. This was pre social media. So although we knew this show had been a success, you’re not actually meeting the people who’ve been watching it or hearing from them or hearing comments from them. And that roar that went up when Reece and I came up from the local shop. It was just the most emotional kind of moment. And me and Reece just looked at each other. Couldn’t believe how passionate the audience were for these characters. And I think it was taking the League of Gentlemen back on tour that made us realise - in the same way we’ve just done with Inside No 9 - it’s taking him back on and doing live performance that makes you realise just what it means to the people who are watching it at home.

WI: Yes. We will obviously touch upon, at least, Inside No 9. But a digression. You played quite a few real life characters as it were. Like we saw a clip where you played Tony Martin the Burg-  Yeah. He went to prison for shooting a burglar. More recently,  Rupert Murdoch  you played.

SP: Yeah.

WI: And yeah, someone else springs to mind. But could you, though let’s say Rupert Murdoch. You were quite unrecognisable, actually.

SP: Thank god! 

WI: But yeah I'm trying to bloody think of the name of the series. 

SP: The Hack.

WI: The Hack, of course, yeah. Also David Tennant.

SP: Mm! Brilliant cast. 

WI: Absolutely. Yes. Was Toby Jones in-?

SP: Yes

WI: Yes he was! He’s in everything. So you were in makeup for quite a long time.

SP: That was a 4-hour makeup. Why not just cast an 80-year-old Australian?

WI: Exactly

SP: But anyway, it was a small role in the overall series, but obviously I knew that his presence would be very significant. And everything that was said by the character of Rupert Murdoch - because it was a recreation of a real event. So everything in the script that I said was something he had said. So I didn’t try to put anything on top of that. His words speak for themselves. He tried not to take any responsibility for the whole mess of what had happened with phone hacking. It’s quite clear he’d known about it and he tried to obfuscate and he ended up getting pied and they were really annoyed about that because that took the, you know - that was the headline, the fact that he’d been pied by a protester rather than his lack of responsibility. But yeah, it’s… we in the League of Gentlemen days never used prosthetics. Because they were too unwieldy back in the late '90s.  And for us it didn’t seem to work in terms of performance. Now they’ve come on so much, and I’ve never done a big makeup job like that before. 4 hours in the chair. And I’m glad I only did it for two days. Quite an unpleasant experience. But a good thing happened - I was talking to my makeup artist and I was telling him we were writing this play. I don’t know if anyone managed to see Inside No 9 the stage play? And I was talking to the guy who was doing all my prosthetics and I said "We’re writing a thing about the Grand Guignol," which was a type of theatre popularised in Paris in the '20s and '30s that relied on gore and effects. So I said, you know, we’re trying to come up with something that would work in the Grand Guignol. He said, "Well, I’ve got a thing that I created for a play where a man comes on stage and saws his own leg off." I said, "Wow, that sounds great!" And we ended up getting him onto the show. And because I’d done that job and worked with that man, we ended up with a great scene where Reece came on in a lunatic asylum and literally saws his own leg off and pulls it off. So, it’s those little connections you make with people along the way. Same way as if I’d never gone to Bretton Hall, never would have met Mark and Reece. If I hadn’t done that job and played Rupert Murdoch, we wouldn’t have had that scene. So, everything happens for a reason. 

WI: Another real life person was Robbie Williams’s dad in Better Man.

SP: Yes. 

WI: Which I was telling you earlier that I watched last week or a few days ago or so on Amazon. And he - I’m not really, I’m not a fan of Robbie. But I just thought, "Oh, I’ll give this a go." And I couldn’t stop watching it. And he plays his dad. He’s in it so much, Steve. And he’s fantastic. So, yeah. And, you told us how you got that job, didn’t you?

SP: Yes, I did. One of the clips you showed was from an episode called Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room, which is an episode of Inside No 9 where I played a sort of old school entertainer - me and Reece played an old double act. And in fact, those of you paying attention will notice I was wearing exactly the same wig when I played Tony Martin! And that part has actually got me another job because they were trying to cast Peter Conway, who’s Robbie Williams dad, and  Peter Conway, you know, used to perform in Butlins and do pier shows and stuff like that. And so they were looking for someone who could bring that that sort of humour out. And one of the other actors who was in Better Man - it’s all made in Australia - he was looking down the list of the possible actors and he saw my name. And he said, "Oh my god, you’ve got to watch this episode!" Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room. 

So he went and got his copy of the DVD, brought it to the director’s house, and he said, "You must watch this now." And the director watched the episode, and he went, "Boom, we’ve got our guy." And they offered me the job off the back of that. So, again, it’s just, you know, right place, right time really. 

Normally in a film like that, you’d expect to go through three or four loads of auditions, but an amazing director, Michael Gracey, he also did The Greatest Showman. And he showed me- We had a video conference, and he showed me his idea for the end of the film, which is... For those of you who haven’t seen it, Robbie Williams is portrayed by an ape. Which was all rendered in CGI. And the ape who’s Robbie gets his dad out of the audience at the Royal Albert Hall and they sing "My Way." And I t hought "Well, my mum’s gonna love that." (laughs) That was genuinely my first thought. "Oh, my mum going to the cinema to watch that!" So I was hooked and I had a brilliant time making the film. Robbie was there and very - he loves his comedy. The first thing we did when I met him, we started singing the Cannon and Ball theme song 'Together We’ll be OK'. (sings) "Laugh me a laugh / Grin me a grin..."

SP: Me and Robbie Williams singing this in Australia on the set of the Royal Albert Hall! And it just was one of those pinch me moments. A huge, huge film with about 15 cameras filming and cranes and everything. And I hadn’t done a lot of that type of stuff before. So I was very nervous about it. And then it came out. Not a lot of people went to watch it, but those who did tended to like it. So, I’m very grateful.

WI: Did you - have you kept in touch with Robbie? Have you, like, become friends?

SP: Yes. Well, I wouldn’t say we’re friends. But yeah, I’ve kept in touch with him. I’ve been to his house and in fact, we’re going to see his art exhibition at the weekend.

WI: Where’s that?

SP: That’s in MoCo Gallery in London.

WI: Oh, OK.

SP: And he does very - If anyone knows David Shrigley? That sort of-

WI: Yeah, he lives in Brighton- 

SP: -very comic, huh?

WI: Does he live in Brighton? 

SP: Does he? Get him on!

WI: I've tried!

SP: He’s a very, very funny artist. And Robbie’s stuff is very similar to that. He’s ripped him off, basically. But yeah, Robbie is - if you’ve seen him being interviewed, you know, that’s exactly what he’s like in real life. And he’s very open, very honest. And he told his story and it’s all about his addictions and how he overcame them. And yeah, I think it’s a great film.

WI: It is. Have you seen it, Carl?

K: Yeah, I thought it was alright!

WI: OK. Alright. That's enough. We don’t want a review.

WI: Inside No 9 - was it yours or Reece’s idea? How do you- Do you know how how it came about? Were you sitting in the pub or something?

SP: Well, the genesis of it really was we did a show called Psychoville after The League of Gentlemen - which I think is probably some of the funniest stuff we’ve done. And we made two series of this and the second one hadn’t got great ratings. Not that it mattered really, but we were called into the  BBC  to have a meeting about whether we were going to make a third series and they said, "Do you have anything else?" So, we got the impression they didn’t really want a third series. And we’d done this one episode of Psychoville and - John will appreciate this - we’d written six episodes of Psychoville. Quite an expensive show to make, lots of characters, lots of locations, and Jon Plowman - who was our executive producer - said, "We’re struggling with the budget. If you write a bottle episode with only two or three characters in one room, we can get the budget for that episode and it will cost a lot less, but we’ll spread the money across the series." So, that’s what we did. We wrote a bottle episode of Psychoville. 

And suddenly having... putting limitations on your writing saying "You can’t go out of this room." There were only about three characters in- well, four, I suppose, in the room. And I loved the experience of writing it and I think it really sharpened our writing. So when it was clear they didn’t want any more Psychoville we said "Well, we could make six more of these." Single plays like they used to back in the day. The old Play for Todays which is essentially theatre on TV, really.  And they commissioned us to write two scripts, which we did, and they enjoyed them. So it came about really through... it was born out of Psychoville and it was born out of us not having really thought of anything else. But to say an anthology series... you weren’t committing to one idea. And, I mean, I can’t believe we’ve been doing it for 10 years. Although it’s over now.

(audience goes 'awwwwwwwww')

SP: Yeah, I know. Sorry.

WI: Was it your decision to end it?

SP: It was, yeah. We did nine series and we felt that that was sort of poetic and- 

(an audience member's phone starts making a noise)

SP: Hello...? And yeah, we decided to finish it there and then do a stage show. And we may live to regret that decision. But I’m very glad that we had the control over it. With Psychoville it felt like unfinished business. It felt like that we hadn’t made that decision ourselves. So yeah, we had a brilliant run and because it’s quite hard coming up with six completely different episodes every single year. And we didn’t want it to start being one of those shows that people were like, "Oh, it stopped being good in series 5."

SP: You know, we wanted to keep the quality up right till the end. Well we tried anyway.

WI: Yes.

SP: Thank you. Someone just said "you did." For the benefit of everyone else.

WI: You’ve done so many episodes but... Would- I dunno. Do you have a favourite or are there any particular ones that you’re fond of?

SP: I genuinely don’t have a favourite. Impossible. 

WI: Yeah, I know. He’s done so many...

SP: Impossible. There’s, yeah, there’s just loads that I really enjoyed. I really am fond of the one called Love’s Great Adventure, which is very anti Inside No 9 in that it’s very naturalistic. It’s got no horror element to it. It’s not particularly funny. But it was a real slice of life  Ken Loach-ian kind of drama. And I loved filming in a different genre like that. But then on the other end of the spectrum, Zanzibar,  which we wrote in rhyming couplets and in iambic pentameter. I loved doing that one. And the Bernie Clifton. The silent episode, A Quiet Night In, I loved doing that. Anything where we could play with the form of TV was particularly exciting. 

WI: And you’ve had some brilliant cast over the years. You know, Denis Lawson in the silent one, Mark Bonnar, Jane Horrocks. Incredible. And, you know... David Morrissey, Ralf Little... I could go on but I won’t. That kind of thing adds to it, would you say? It’s not just the story, but it’s the characters and the other actors, the cast in general?

SP: Definitely. I mean, I think, you know, good actors elevate everything you do. So we were very lucky. The first episode we did was called Sardines, all set in a wardrobe with a group of characters playing Sardines. And I think there were 10 or 11 of us, but we had the likes of Timothy West, we had Anne Reid, we had Katherine Parkinson, Anna Chancellor... I can’t even remember the full wardrobe of people... Olivia [sic] Lovibond. And we just looked around at the talent that, you know, had come in to do this little script that we’d written. And it’s yeah, you know, because I think for Reece and I, we’ve done so many different characters. I think it’s easy for us to not think of ourselves as actors in that way. You think of yourself really as a sketch actor or a comedy actor. And actually that’s really under-valuing and underplaying what we do. Because it is all performance at the end of the day. And to be shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the greats of of comedy and drama, which we were able to do in Inside No 9.... Yeah, it was it was really humbling.

WI: You are a brilliant actor. And so is Reece, you know, and- 

SP: You didn’t have to throw that in.

WI: Well, actually-

SP: He is

WI: He’s not here...

SP: He is. He is a brilliant actor.

WI: But, you know, you watch Inside No 9 and it’s all in there. You know: The pathos, the tragedy, the comedies, the characters... all that kind of thing, such a variety, you know, and you mentioned, of course, we saw a clip earlier of Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room. I watched that when it went out and it’s just so moving, you know, and you’ve got the twist as you do in most episodes and all that kind of thing. So. Reece. Is he a really good friend of yours? And you work together so much and, you know, you must be so very close to each other and all that kind of thing. Is it a particularly positive relationship where you collaborate so well and is there, perhaps, briefly, a kind of particular process of writing together? Do you sit in a room and write together?

SP: Yeah. Yeah. I mean a lot of people who write together they might divvy up the work and say, "You do that scene. I’ll do this scene." And then they come back. But we’ve never liked to work like that. We’ve always liked to be in the same room. And we just enjoy each other’s company. We make each other laugh. We bring out the best in each other. And I think writing with a partner allows any ideas to spill forth because you’re vocalising them. I think as a writer on your own, you’re not saying much out loud. And it helps to really shape what you want to say, just saying it out loud. And having a sounding board who’s going to agree or disagree. We don’t agree about everything. We don’t have exactly the same taste. But we have the same sense of humour. And yeah, he’s my absolute best friend. And it’s lovely to go to work every day with your best friend in a little office and just try and make each other laugh or surprise each other. 

WI: Does it feel like you’ve got the best job in the world? Some people say that, but, you know, do you have that feeling?

SP: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, certainly the past decade that we’ve been doing Inside No 9 has been a real privilege. The fact that we’ve been lucky enough to be left alone by again by the BBC who never wanted to see scripts, never wanted to see edits, didn’t want casting approval. We were just left to make the show the way we wanted to make it. And again I think that’s that’s why it has the unique flavour that it has. And so, yeah, I feel it we definitely have that. And as well as doing our own show we’re able to do other acting performances, other roles, whatever comes up. And if a film like Better Man comes up we’ll make the space for me to do it. And similarly for Reece. So... And the fact that we can do drama and comedy, we can do stage and screen... Yeah, we’re very, very fortunate indeed.

WI: Yes. So, obviously you play people like Rupert Murdoch. And, you know, he’s played a couple of real nasty bastards. The Widower! He was in that.

SP: Yeah

WI: And it was like... god.

SP: Yeah. He was brilliant in that, which is on Netflix at the moment. Yeah. And and like I say, I think there is sometimes there is I remember going for an audition and having done The League of Gentlemen and went for an audition for an ITV drama and the director went, "Oh, you act as well, do you?" And that there can be this kind of dismissal of comic performance and it’s great to show people in straighter roles that you can do that. I think both of us have really grasped those opportunities.

WI: Yeah. Like Whitechapel.

SP: Yes. Whitechapel. Yeah. Happy Valley was a great-. 

WI: Oh, of course! Killing Eve as well!

SP: - for me, yes. Happy Valley was a strange one 'cos it was one of the few times me and Reece have been up for the same part. And we both really wanted it. And so that was… that was hard. But they made the right choice. 

WI: Yeah, that was in a like a local village kind of for local people Happy Valley.

SP: It was! In, um, Hebden Bridge. Yeah. Sally Wainwright - brilliant, brilliant writer, and it’s so... I don’t know if many people here work in in television or whatever, but it’s so unusual as an actor to get all the scripts in advance of filming. Normally, you might get the first two and then you’re hoping that they will come in once you’ve started. And that’s not the way we’ve written, me and Reece. We always have our scripts written by the day one of pre-production. 'Cos how can anyone do their jobs if they haven’t got scripts? But with Sally Wainwright, when you were auditioning for the role, all six scripts were there for you to read. And they were so gripping and so brilliantly written hardly a word needed to be changed. And it’s just so rare. It’s just not the way most dramas are made, unfortunately.

WI: My last question before we open it up, as they say, to the audience. By the way it’s a really good audience don’t you think? 

SP: Very good audience. Yeah, absolutely. Very attentive.

WI: Better than the last month, actually. But some are here tonight but you were (mumbles) last time. Can you tell us what’s coming up for you next workwise at all? Can you? Any world exclusives?

SP: I’m on The Weakest Link on Saturday night! That’s about it. 

SP: No, genuinely, we’ve only just finished doing a tour of Inside No 9, our stage show. We finished with a week in Hammersmith Apollo and we decided not to try and work in the days when we were doing the stage show. And so now we are getting back in our writing room and we’re kicking around ideas and we’ll have to start pitching, I suppose. And maybe the TV landscape has moved on since we since we last had that meeting and Inside No 9 came about, but... Yeah we’re interested in developing more stuff. Together. Definitely. But I can’t tell you what. I don’t… I really don’t know.

WI: Sure. Well, I’m sure we look forward to whatever you and Reece will be doing next. Now we’re going to see if there’s any questions from the audience. 

SP: OK

WI: You want any audience questions?

SP: Definitely!

WI: OK...

---

And I'm gonna have to do a part 2 for the audience Q&A cos this is ridiculously long as it is. Thank you for reading. 'Cos in the words of Steven James Pemberton himself... that took ages.