IF you’re a Coronation Street fan, you’ll recognise Anna Crilly and Katy Wix – they’re the two furniture- obsessed women who appeared in the show’s ad breaks before the meerkats took over.

You might also have seen them in a couple of sitcoms. Katy plays dopey Daisy alongside Lee Mack in Not Going Out, and Anna was Jack Dee’s sullen cleaner in Lead Balloon. Now the duo have branched out with a series of their own called – what else? – Anna and Katy.

The pair first met ten years ago on the stand-up circuit, where they formed something of a mutual fan club. However, while they may have appreciated each other’s humour, it seems audiences did not always know what to make of the newly-formed double act.

Talking about her stand-up experiences, Katy says: “When it’s good, it’s great, but when you’re dying in front of people it’s depressing. I always feel like a husk of a person at the end, a vertical husk.”

Perhaps part of the problem was that comedy fans don’t always expect sheer, unabashed silliness from comediennes.

“I don’t want to say as it’s embarrassing, but we always feel that there’s a thing about women trying to be slightly surreal. It feels like it’s not always encouraged, whereas men can be what they like,” she says.

They’ve have also been given the official seal of approval by the grande dames of female double acts, French and Saunders, who invited Anna and Katy onto their Radio 2 Show.

In tonight’s episode, Brian Dowling appears as the host of a double entendreladen quiz show, while the employees of car wash company Ignition are concerned that they haven’t had any customers.

The experts on Olden Roadhaus, Germany’s answer to the Antiques Roadshow, get to work valuing some vintage sausages, there’s a Halloween special of daytime TV show Congratulations, and former Holby City star Jeremy Sheffield takes on a new stage role.