Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are set to embark on their first tour in a decade, entitled We Are Not A Robot.

 

Fans will know the duo as hosts of Radio 4's The Now Show. Before that they were half of BBC sketch show the Mary Whitehouse Experience alongside David Baddiel and Rob Newman and then had their own BBC series.

 

Steve Punt is also a writer, presenter, script editor and voiceover artist. As well as being a panellist on Mock The Week Hugh Dennis has acted in shows including the hit sitcom Outnumbered and Fleabag. He appeared in the C4 thriller The Couple Next Door and played a scientist in the James Bond movie No Time To Die.

 

 

 

Steve Punt: We were supposed to tour in 2021, but because of the pandemic it didn't happen. And you start to look at the calendar and think, if we don't do this now we're probably never going to do it.

 

It's also because The Now Show is ending after 25 years. It seemed like a perfect confluence of things. It's just asserting your independence. It's very easy to think people live in the radio or on the telly, but actually people do radio and TV as parts of what they do, and I always think that live shows are the core of everything.

 

 

Steve: One of the consistent themes in The Now Show has been society's relationship with technology. So we're bound to touch on that. Plus, it's a funny title, I just like the idea of it. It sums up our relationship with all the gadgets that we use in our lives.

 

 

Steve: What we've found over the years is that topical comedy is often a sleight of hand. It's comedy attached to topical subjects. Sometimes there are things that have been written as topical, but actually they're standalone funny bits. So we've taken bits that we wanted to expand and will theatricalise them, though I don't think that's a word.

 

 

Hugh Dennis: Mr Strange seems to be remembered even though he's from 1992. I still get people shouting his catchphrase 'Milky Milky' at me in the street. There are lots of things I don't want people shouting at me in the street so 'Milky Milky' is good. He's not going to be on in the first five minutes, let's put it that way...

 

Steve: There's a character from the TV show, the World of Wine expert, who works really well in a live context. We could say in a very poncy way that it's about his journey through the changing media landscape, but basically the joke is that he used to be on BBC Two and is now on YouTube.

 

Hugh: And the Minister who I play. He's always wanting to resign and then saying he's not going to resign and then resigning. Even if you didn't know him originally, it's a timeless thing.

 

 

Steve: I think we have very 'polite, well-thought-out creative discussions.' You can't really work as a double act unless there's an element of trust. If I have doubts about something and Hugh is entirely confident, I know from my experience that it's worth trusting.

 

And ultimately the audience decides in the end. Mock The Week was edited down from three hours to 28 minutes. The bits that you never saw were people flailing. You had to develop this skin where you sent something out and if it didn't work, you move on. It's like when a centre forward misses a goal. The really good centre forwards don't even think about it. They just get on with the game.

 

 

Steve: Conflicted in a way. I immediately thought 'oh no, we're going to miss the election.' But there's a big part of me that's looking forward to being liberated from everything I write being a hilarious look at the week's news. It's very limiting and also increasingly, it's a problem because topical jokes are done immediately on social media. Meeting on Tuesday, recording on Thursday and going out Friday feels very old now.

 

 

 

Steve: "We're not privy to those decisions, but there's certainly been much more emphasis on balance going right back to 2010, since the Conservatives came back to power. Balance is a requirement for news, but what seems to have happened increasingly over the last decade is that comedy shows are treated as if they're news shows. And you get told, 'oh, this show's got to be balanced politically.'

 

I do think over the last few years that there's been more of a push. Now you've got to be balanced all the time, when audiences are just not interested in the opposition in the same way. And in the end comedy is not just about what the comedian wants to talk about. It's a Venn diagram where it's about what the comedian wants to talk about and what the audience wants to talk about."