Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver on the art of the double act

Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver, also known as the double act Watson and Oliver. Picture: Contributed

It’s even worse when they speak at the same time. Thus it’s a bemusing task, recreating the substance of a chat with Lorna Watson and Ingrid Oliver – aka Watson & Oliver. Series Two of their eponymous sketch show is back on the BBC this week, and they’ve promised characters such as a prime minister and her put-upon husband, and a matador in love with his favourite bull. There’s even a cameo from Clare Balding.

The only way to do this, I’ve decided, is as a chaotic short play.

SCENE: The William Morris Rooms at the V&A in London.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Lorna Watson – blonde and softly spoken; Ingrid Oliver – brunette and deeper of voice; Lee Randall – noisy girl reporter.

Enter Watson and Oliver, laden with shopping. The thirty-somethings met at Tiffin Girls’ School in Kingston-upon-Thames. They first performed together in 2005, and at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 and 2007. Both also act, appearing in programmes such as Doc Martin and the Peep Show, and they performed together in 2012’s Let’s Dance for Sport Relief. Earlier this year Oliver won The Great Comic Relief Bake Off, and she’s also appearing in the upcoming 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who.

WATSON: I think it’s a great thing that we had a friendship before we became a double act.

OLIVER: We’ve just realised that the nature of our relationship has changed from just being friends who hang out, to a professional relationship, but obviously the show doesn’t come before the friendship.

WATSON: Yes, yes.

OLIVER: That’s always going to be the most important thing.

WATSON: Yeah, yeah.

ME: Tell me about the show.

WATSON: Funnily enough, in the first series, we had a beginning, middle and end with a musical number. We [had done] that in Edinburgh, because we wanted people to go out on a high. But we used to do really concept-driven sketches, [so] hardly anything from Edinburgh made it into the telly programme.

OLIVER: In Edinburgh we were playing in a black box, and wore matching black suits, so the audience go with you in whatever it is you choose to do, character-wise. We were vaguely men all the time in our Edinburgh show, or genderless, but you can’t do that on television … [there are] prosthetics, and so on …

ME: Do you ever argue about who gets to wear the biggest cucumber?

OLIVER: Ha! Actually I won that. I’m playing a matador, and I had a massive, massive – more than one pair of socks stuffed down my pants. It was quite empowering.

(With barely a year between the first and second series, the duo brought additional writers on board, instead of trying to do it entirely on their own.)

WATSON: We had some really nice workshops, where we’d sit down with a big group and throw ideas into the mix. Maybe it’s difficult for other people to write for a double act, especially one that’s known each other for so long, but we’ve definitely got some great writers on board who’ve found our voice.

OLIVER: The BBC is very good at nurturing double acts and left us to get on with it.

WATSON: We wouldn’t take on material that didn’t feel right, at the end of the day.

ME: Is there anything the BBC said you couldn’t do? Why are you making that face at me?

OLIVER: Because I am thinking about the word “titty”.

WATSON: We had to take that out of series one.

OLIVER: They thought it might go out before the watershed. I wish we’d left it in.

WATSON: To be honest we’ve never been very sweary. We said “skull-f***” once, at the very end of our first Edinburgh show, and it got quite extreme reactions, because we hadn’t sworn for the whole hour. We realised: “Oh –

OLIVER: – we lost some of them!”

(In one sketch Oliver plays the British PM, who tries to wriggle out of family commitments by fabricating crises in the office. Watson plays Angela Merkel, who’s come to the UK with a similar plan in mind.)

ME: But Ingrid, you’re the one who’s half German, aren’t you?

OLIVER: That’s right. Annoyingly, I had to speak with a bad German accent. I found [that] very frustrating. It’s a pride thing.

(Both read languages, Watson at Edinburgh, Oliver at Oxford.)

ME: How many languages between the two of you?

WATSON: Well, French and German but my German, you wouldn’t know that I spoke it.

OLIVER: And we learned Danish, because we do a The Killing sketch.

WATSON: We had to put idiot boards up when we were filming – phonetically spelled-out sentences. I had just done a scene with an actor who is actually Danish, and said: “Oh wow, it’s like being in a Nordic drama; I’m loving this.” He said: “Yes, and what’s really weird for me is that I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” I honestly thought I was speaking fluent Danish.

ME: Having gone the academic route at university, how did you decide on the creative life?

WATSON: For me, it was going to Edinburgh University and staying on for the festival. I did The Improverts at the Bedlam theatre at midnight. The audience was off their faces every night, and because I was the only girl it was always “Get your fanny out” or “gynaecologist” or things like that. It really opened up my eyes, that summer. I watched so much comedy. I remember thinking: “Oh right, you can put a show on here.” It was a way in.

OLIVER: I always knew I wanted to do this but I never believed it was a job, unless you were Liz Taylor. I used to watch a lot of films and television, as we both did growing up, and I didn’t really believe you could do it for a job, unless you were incredibly beautiful, or incredibly smart. After university we both went into television production for a while, behind the camera. One day a friend said, because I clearly wasn’t very happy: “You’ve always wanted to be in front of the camera, haven’t you?” And it clicked. We went up to Edinburgh separately, and I saw a female double act at the Pleasance. I remember ringing you after we got back, saying: “We can totally do this, you know.” We’d written together, but had never talked about forming a double act.

ME: How long did it take to get a solid hour?

WATSON: We’d been kicking it about for ages, proper procrastinators. Then we went: “Right, we’re going to book a theatre” – and gave ourselves two months to write an hour-long show. Maybe 50 per cent of that ended up in our very first Edinburgh. We scrapped the rest because it was properly shit.

OLIVER: We hadn’t even done ten minutes before. So it wasn’t just the material: I remember standing backstage going: “I have no idea if we’re funny. I have no idea how we come across on stage. We could be doing an hour to silence.” With stand-up, you can get off or come out of character, but you have to commit to sketch comedy. So that’s an hour of pain for everyone in the room because you can’t break that fourth wall.

ME: I want each of you to tell me the best and then the most aggravating thing about the other one.

OLIVER: Let’s start with the most aggravating thing then shall we? That’s much easier. The thing about Lorna, and I think you’re getting worse –

WATSON: Oh no!

OLIVER: Is your speed. Honestly, I have never met anyone so slow in all of my life.

WATSON: Yes.

OLIVER: Our natural rhythms are diametrically opposed. I am fast to the point of chaos and Lorna moves at half the speed of a normal human being .

WATSON: I don’t know how to get faster.

OLIVER: It makes me laugh and cry in equal measures. And the best thing, oh, here we go.

WATSON: Does it sound really disgusting?

OLIVER: No, it sounds really cheesy, but she’s my best friend, so it’s lovely to be able to work with her. You can just trust her completely.

WATSON: Mine is similar. I find myself wandering around my house after her picking up a vase or a glass that she might just pick up or throw on the floor. She dumped an entire Berocca on my computer once. But, well, Ingrid makes me laugh more than anyone. We’re the same but we’re also different. We can bring out different things in each other, but also, I hope complement each other. And we have each other’s backs. We just write what we find funny. We never have conversations about who should play what part, we instinctively know who’s right for [it]. Also, the sheer amount of time that we have to spend together is extraordinary, and if we didn’t have this brilliant friendship – I don’t know how people do it if they’re not best friends.

ME: Who are your comedy heroes?

WATSON: Double act-wise, everyone from Morecambe and Wise, the Two Ronnies, Fry and Laurie, and French and Saunders. Victoria Wood, and sketch shows like Big Train and The Mary Whitehouse Experience. I watched stand-up as well. I tried it for a while and it was… not for me. I realised I preferred character-driven stuff. Also I wanted to be Eddie Izzard, immediately, as in I got really annoyed that I wasn’t Eddie Izzard immediately, and realised I’d have to do at least five years of not being Eddie Izzard before I could get anywhere. But that was an inevitable realisation.

OLIVER: I don’t know about influences, but we watch a lot of television because we’re doing take-offs and pastiches, like one about Call the Midwife in the second series. We get to write a period drama sketch, or a crime thriller, so at the stage when no-one would be casting us in those things, we get to cast ourselves in it.

WATSON: Comedy’s a funny, weird old job, isn’t it?

With that, they dash off to get to an audition in time. It goes without saying that they’re vying for the same role.

• Watson & Oliver airs at 10pm on Thursday on BBC2