Say the words “we don’t do duvets” or “swing your pants” to most British people in their 30s, and it’s a safe bet they’ll know what you’re on about. The comedy duo Trev and Simon were a staple of the children’s TV game in the late 80s and mid-90s, famed for catchphrase-heavy sketches and making pop stars look silly. Key to their success was that they were also a hit with adults, be it parents at home or their BBC colleagues who would gleefully chortle away offscreen.
The duo, both in their early 50s, have now teamed up with another former children’s TV star (and Doctor Who sidekick) Sophie Aldred for Strangeness in Space, an audio comedy drama “for kids aged eight to 80”. It sees them orbiting Planet Mirth in a shonky spaceship, having adventures and fighting off sworn enemies. Doon MacKichan and Rufus Hound are lined up to appear later in the crowdfunded series.
In some ways it’s familiar Trev and Simon – relentlessly daft, with plenty of running jokes. In others, it’s new territory. We’re used to seeing them as adults in a children’s world; in Strangeness in Space they’re more like troublesome boys on an elaborate school trip, cracking gags and causing havoc. We remember the twosome as mickey-takers, but this is also an affectionate ode to the science-fiction genre.
The idea of children’s entertainers losing their edge may seem incongruous, but Trevor Neal and Simon Hickson were quite politicised when they started out. The flyer for their 1984 Edinburgh festival show, under the name Devilfishhornclub, promised “non-racist, non-sexist humour”. “We were doing stupid, daft stuff, but it had a very alternative base,” says Neal. “I suppose it was what has become ‘political correctness’. You could say we were the vanguard of PC.”
Their interaction has barely changed from their Going Live! and Live & Kicking days: Neal the velvety, laid-back one, Hickson the busy, emotive one. They met in 1981 at Manchester University where they both studied drama. Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson and Ben Elton had graduated from the same department just a few years earlier – a fully maned and bearded Elton briefly taught them as part of his PhD.
The alternative circuit beckoned, and they began sharing bills with other up-and-comers: Jack Dee, Jo Brand, Arthur Smith and Paul Merton. When the call came from the BBC, inviting them for an audition, Neal was working for an insurance company in Hyde Park Corner, and Hickson as a clerk at the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians. It wasn’t long before they were household names. The celebrity guests they enlisted for their sketches included WWE wrestlers, Kylie Minogue and Mel Brooks.
Not everyone enjoyed their antics, though. “I have an unforgiving memory,” says Hickson. “I remember exactly who refused to do sketches with us – Bros wouldn’t, but I can’t remember why.”
“I think they were just too protected,” says Neal. “They were nice lads, but they weren’t very good at taking the mickey out of themselves, they were too humourless.”
“Then there was Sting – everyone thought that we’d made him really angry because we’d been calling him Stink the whole show, and he’d come on with a baseball bat and started smashing everything up. Actually he was just acting – he was really good at playing it straight.”
Every Trev and Simon fan has their favourite sketch – mine was World of the Strange, presented by the extravagantly quiffed twosome who thought mysterious forces were behind the most mundane occurrences. Their favourites, as it happens, are the Drapers – the slightly creepy dry cleaners who didn’t do duvets (and then didn’t do perms when they had a career change and became barbers). (In an odd twist, Neal’s half of the pair was called Don Draper.)
Tours, books, videos and appearances at student unions were spawned off the back of their TV success, but their time was up come 1997. Live & Kicking was on the wane, even before Ant and Dec began hoovering up viewers on “the other side” (what ITV and BBC would interchangeably be called). Neal recalls what it was like emerging from the madhouse of Saturday morning TV:
“TV comedy had gone through a massive change in those 10 years, there were double acts all over the place at that time. There was Vic and Bob, Paul [Whitehouse] and Harry [Enfield] had been doing things, there was Newman and Baddiel, then Skinner and Baddiel, and then behind us Ant and Dec were taking over Saturday morning TV – so it was exciting, but not a great time to be trying to find your place as a double act on TV.”
Strangeness in Space, funded through a Kickstarter campaign, takes the duo into the new dimension of online comedy. The show “is more family friendly than what we did on Saturday morning TV,” says Hickson. “When we were younger, we did things that we found funny, and tried to encourage other people to come into that world. Now what we find funny is gentler. I think we’ve got soft as we’ve got older …”
- Strangeness in Space episodes 1 and 2 are available now for free from strangenessinspace.com
