Good Evening: the sketches of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

SHAUN MICALLEF

It seems like you've been pretty damn busy lately, with the CD, Talkin' Bout Your Generation, the upcoming Pete & Dud show... Well it appears that way, but ...Your Generation actually finished filming back in July and I've been twiddling my thumbs a bit. We started the CD in July last year, when I was doing a play called Boeing Boeing, which was a West End hit, but less so over here - both less West End and less hit - so I had a bit of downtime to just muck around with some voices and do strictly audio material and I enjoyed it enormously. It was nice to just go in and conjure up the world of the theatre and play an old man without actually having to build a set or wear a lot of make-up all day, which I am finding increasingly more irritating.

And of course one can record a comedy album entirely nude. That's true. I've always wanted to do a comedy album even though it is very 80s. I remember listening to comedy LPs when I was growing up and thinking that they were great. I don't know whether people even do them anymore.

You created Good Evening from Cook and Moore's sketches - were you a fan as a child? It gets back to those LPs again, because I actually grew up not having seen their TV show [Not Only but Also], but knowing all the material from the LPs, which was taken from the soundtracks.

And like your own comedy, it's very language-based. It always works on a couple of levels and that's what I like about Cook and Moore's stuff. Cook mainly, because I suspect that he is the architect of the pieces and Dud was probably the decorator. ‘One Leg Too Few' [a sketch with a one-legged man auditioning for the part of Tarzan] is probably the most perfect sketch that I can think of. It is extraordinarily economical. Particularly the one line that kills me: "I've got nothing against your right leg; the trouble is neither have you". [laughs] There is not one wasted line in it. Andrew P Street

Shaun Micallef's album His Generation is out now through Shock.

STEPHEN CURRY

I presume you're hard at work getting your Dudley Moore-isms down? Ah, no. I haven't quite started rehearsing for Pete & Dud yet. See, I've got nine pages of emails to delete and I've been told I'm not allowed to start until I've deleted them.

Sounds like you've got pressures from all sides, then. That Shaun Micallef, man. I refuse to work with him again - he's too much trouble. Oh alright, he's actually quite a nice fellow. The Opera House - I can't wait. It's a bit of a dream.

Were you a fan of the material? Oh yes, there are some real beauties in there. And Shaun's a real student of them - I would go so far as to say he's a comedy geek. He's been studying them for years, and to be honest with you I was more familiar with [Cook and Moore's utterly filthy and entirely improvised alter egos] Derek & Clive, so when I heard Shaun wanted to do some Cook and Moore stuff I thought "Oh god, my mum won't be able to come and see that!"

And that's vital to a successful project: the Mrs Curry Seal of Approval? Yep, that's usually my barometer: if someone says "do you want to do something?" I think to myself, "could my mum see it?" So this has worked out well.

Did you run the first scripts of [Foxtel/SBS sitcom] :30 Seconds past your mum too? Oh yes, of course I did - you've got to, she rules with an iron fist. [laughs] Actually, it did enter my mind. You get used to reading scripts that are supposed to be "funny" but kinda "aren't", but I read the first scripts all the way through and absolutely loved it. For me it's about not making lowest common denominator comedy, but comedy that makes people sit forward and listen to get the laugh out of it.

And that's coming from a man who was in the cast of Sit Down Shut Up. [sighs heavily] Oh yeah, exactly. Thanks for that. Andrew P Street

:30 Seconds: Series 1 is out now through Universal.