Having strayed from their stage act, comedy duo Punt and Dennis are back with a new tour. Steve Pratt reports.

AFTER five years of concentrating on two radio series, comic duo Punt and Dennis realised that they didn't have a stage act any more. The Now Show on Radio 4 and It's Been A Bad Week on Radio 2 are both topical shows which are written and performed, and then the pair move on to the next show.

"They both get written in the week and that's it. We had this material but couldn't turn up and do a show with it later on because it was all topical. And there's a clause that if you don't have an act you are not, strictly speaking, qualified as comedians," says Steve Punt.

The pair first worked together as one half of The Mary Whitehouse Experience (David Baddiel and Rob Newman were the others) in the late 1980s on Radio 1 and later on BBC2. At that time, they were doing lots of live gigs too.

"It's a big swap to have stuff you write and then frustratingly only do it once on the radio show," says Punt. "Touring a show is the complete opposite. It gets worked on by night. You can sit around in meetings and rehearsals as long as you want but putting a show in front of an audience means it's developed by a factor of ten.

"In radio, you have the safety net of knowing you can do it again if there are mistakes or fluffs or bits that don't work. You know that stuff that gets mucked up is going to get re-taken. It's a slightly different set of performing skills to radio comedy."

The pair did a short series of live dates last year as a warm-up for the current tour, which takes in York and Middlesbrough this month. "It's not topical in this same sense as the radio shows are, but we do like to change things to what's in the news," says Punt.

They'd been on the comedy circuit before The Mary Whitehouse Experience came along, at a time when Radio 1 bosses decided to venture into comedy, territory that was unknown for the station then.

"We had a lot of teenagers writing in and saying they didn't know you could do comedy on the radio. Unless you grew up in a Radio 4 household, you wouldn't know there was comedy on the radio," he says.

"We piloted our current shows for Radio 2 and Radio 4 within a few weeks of each other and thought it would be nice if one or the other got commissioned. Both were. We've tried to make them as different as possible. One is reasonably satirical, the other is entirely silly."

Both he and Hugh Dennis work solo as well as together. Punt writes for other comedians, including Rory Bremner, Jo Brand and Alistair MacGowan, as well as putting in appearances on TV and radio shows as a presenter or guest.

Their partnership seems to work well without the personality clashes that afflict some double acts. "You get used to a way of working after a while, especially as material builds up that you've done before," explains Punt. "There's quite a lot of candour required to put together a good comedy show. If you're trying to be diplomatic, you end up compromising. The better you know someone, the better it works."

He's a great fan of Peter Cook, who was half of a double act with Dudley Moore, although Punt and Dennis appear not to have the same love-hate relationship as that duo.

"Comedy is one of those things where you do improve," he says. "You get better as you get more experienced. I found it very interesting that Ricky Gervais became a star at 40 when he wrote something about people's real lives. Hugh had said there was nothing on TV about real work."

Dennis worked in marketing before becoming a full-time comedian. "For a while, he was doing his day job and gigs at night," says Punt. "We once drove back from a gig and all the way down the M6 and M1 he was trying to come up with the name for a new type of perfume product for men. We realised how difficult it was.

"I never had a proper job, much to my parents' horror. I knew that if I went to interviews and got offered a job at a proper salary it would be tempting, so I didn't go."

There are further series of their current radio shows lined up. They're also talking about a sit-com, to appear on the radio initially, then transfer to TV. Punt will continue to write for other people. "I wanted to be a scriptwriter and didn't envisage the performing taking off as much as it did," he says.

"Some stand-ups don't like writing for other people. They like to have their own style and don't like to dilute it. But I like the fact that you are writing for a wider audience. On the comedy circuit, audiences tend to be the same age and quite a narrow demographic. When you're writing for a TV show, depending on what time slot, you're writing for a much wider range of all types and ages of people."

* Punt & Dennis appear at Middlesbrough Theatre on Thursday (tickets 01642 815181) and York Grand Opera House on January 17 (tickets 0870 606 3595).

Published: 08/01/2005