The League of Gentlemen agree . . . they’re having a laugh

IT’S enough to make you feel old, but comedy The League Of Gentlemen has been around for 20 years now.

Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton and Mark Gatiss have all been busy with other projects, but Mark says they were desperate to make the three new episodes screened this week.

“We just set aside the time to do it,” says Mark, who has had Sherlock and Doctor Who to keep him occupied in recent years.

“We knew the 20th anniversary of us winning the Perrier Award and doing our radio series was coming up. We never split up. We just stopped for a break – like Abba.

“We didn’t want to feel like a ’90s band getting back together.

“But the lovely thing actually is we are doing it because we want to, not because we have to.

“If this all went south, and suddenly we’d lost the money or something, it would still have been worth it because it has just been such a good laugh.

“We’ve had a great time getting back together.”

There’s the usual multi-character work for the trio as Royston Vasey is under threat of vanishing altogether as a result of boundary changes.

And decisions had to be made about which ones should make a re-appearance.

“Obviously, some of them reached their natural conclusion, although that doesn’t always stop you bringing them back,” explains Mark.

“It was mostly led by wanting to do certain things again and having a good laugh about it.

“We wrote more than made it into the specials but we wanted to go with the strongest material obviously.”

Mark admits he was heartened by the reaction to the show’s return to BBC2.

“Looking at people’s responses to the announcement that we were going to do it, inevitably, like all these things, it’s actually a reminder of happier times for some people.

“It seems extraordinary for The League Of Gentlemen to be like that.”

At least one way it’s stood the test of time is the use of catchphrases like “local shop for local people”.

Adds Mark: “That catchphrase is actually used in shops, without irony.

“Politicians also use it a lot, and I always get cross, thinking, ‘Do you know where that’s from?’

“That sketch works so well simply because it’s funny.

“The shopkeepers, Edward and Tubbs, are very silly, and they are disproportionately suspicious of anyone going into their silly little shop.

“They treat customers like they’re going to burn the shop down and kill them!”