AS their UK tour prepares to roll into one of Francie and Josie's hometown theatres tomorrow night, Richard Herring and Stewart Lee would like to make it plain that, contrary to the evidence of their last visit to Glasgow's Pavilion, they bear the revered Scottish comedy venerables no personal animosity whatsoever, writes David Belcher.
''What happened last time arose out of financial expediency, not malice,'' Richard Herring says sheepishly. So what did happen 18 months ago in Glasgow during the duo's last British tour, the one which followed in the wake of their Fist Of Fun BBC2 series?
''Well, on that tour we did a routine which depended on me smashing something up on stage every night,'' the Cheddar-born Herring explains. ''We'd run out of stuff by the time we got to King's Lynn, and so I went into an Everything-For-A-Quid bargain shop where they had this pile of videos at #1 each. I bought 15.'' Folk in East Anglia evidently lack a sense of humour, as Richard found himself the owner of 15 Francie And Josie Live videos. ''To my shame, I have to admit that I'd never heard of Francie and Josie before . . . we didn't know how big they were in Scotland. Anyway, we played one of the videos and found it very, very funny.
''Nevertheless, I still had to smash something up on the Pavilion's stage . . . which is how I found myself in Francie and Josie's very own place - with pictures of them on the walls back-stage everywhere - smashing up a Francie and Josie video. Which was a sick thing to do. Sorry, Francie and Josie.''
Perennial iconoclasts, Lee and Herring have spent the past couple of months smashing the midday calm of the British Sunday on BBC2 with This Morning With Richard Not Judy, a parodic series which did for bland husband-and-wife daytime TV chat-show presenters what Fred West did for the reputation of jobbing builders. Like Fist Of Fun, the show also enraged less liberal devotees of the small screen.
''I think our offensiveness was generally delivered in suitably coded form,'' says a thoughtful Herring. ''But some of it was just plain rude. We also had complaints about the show being transmitted at an inappropriate time. ''Some folk phoned in to say they felt we were blasphemous or irreligious, or both. There was a weekly bit in which I donned a spangled leotard and frankly proclaimed my desire for carnal communion with deceased wrestler Big Daddy, too, and Big Daddy's widow apparently wrote in and complained about that.
''I was never convinced it was actually her, but we still wrote her a letter of apology anyway.
''Oh, and live on stage in Glasgow tomorrow, we'll be performing our customary tasteless material about Diana, of course,'' Herring pledges airily.
That should go down nicely
here. How has Glasgow been for you hitherto?
''Whenever we've played in Glasgow before, it's been to smallish audiences who've made lots of appreciative noise. In the Pavilion last time we played to 95 people who sounded like 500.
''If they each bring a couple of friends tomorrow, they should seem like 50,000 people.''
Naturally, Francie and Josie will be most welcome, too.
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