mostly david ephgrave

In 2007, Doggett & Ephgrave briefly reinvented ourselves as the fictional experimental pop duo, Troy Matthews & Portakabin: Portakabin were destined to only appear in two sketches; one featuring the Tory MP Peter Lilley , and another, better one, above. There was little to it, save us miming / dancing to an amusing piece of music whilst wearing a pair of uncomfortably tight roll-necks that belonged to Glyn’s mum, but it made for a popular diversion, when slipped into the midst of a mixed-bill line-up. We rolled the second sketch out countless times between 2007-2009, mostly to success. It was the glue between the two sitcom pilots we stitched together to make our 2007 Etcetera Theatre show ‘Two’s Company…' , as well as featuring in our sketch show ‘Comedy Job Lot’ , performed at both the Etcetera and Soho Theatre in 2009. We’d also did it at the odd London sketch night and local music gig – and most memorably of all, at Edinburgh’s infamous late-night ...

I found this flyer while sorting through my bedroom cupboard. Of all our shows’ taglines, this one had the worst. We must have been possessed by the spirit of ITV. Reading it made me sick in my mouth.  It’s the sort of sentence you’d see in a brochure for a Butlin’s Holiday Camp. Not that I’ve ever looked in one, of course. Not that I’ve ever looked. What were we thinking? ‘Four characters, two situations, one night of comedy’ is less a tagline, more an equation. Perhaps we'd stumbled across the secret formula to funny. It only needs an exclamation mark to seal the deal. Two’s Company wasn’t our finest hour. As shows go, it was a pretty cut-and-shut. We glued together two sitcom pilots with a couple of sketches. One of the sitcoms, 'Chipped, Battered and Burgered', was set in a chip shop in the early 1980s . The plot was basically a reworking of Fawlty Towers’ 'Basil the Rat'. Thank God Cleese and Booth’s lawyers never...