Baddiel And Skinner Unplanned

"He turns up at my house, says David Baddiel. "All the time. When the doorbell rings, it's quite likely to be Frank."

"You're not supposed to do that in London," admits Frank Skinner, sorrowfully. "When I grew up in the West Midlands, you just turned up at people's houses because nobody had a phone. In London, you have to book an appointment to see anybody. Even if you're just dropping in, you're meant to phone first. But I only want a cup of tea; most people can spare 20 minutes in the middle of anything. So that's what I do with Dave, just ring the doorbell if I'm in the vicinity. And since I live up the road, I usually am."

The matey comedians are explaining how they conduct their friend-ship, now that they no longer live together. They were once Britain's most famous flatmates: when their cat brought in frog corpses, the nation was informed.

The flatmate relationship was played out on television: their two series, Fantasy Football and Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, were like the British answer to Friends. Joey and Chandler wear Ralph Lauren clothes, live in an enigmatically luxurious New York apartment and date Elle Macpherson.

Frank and David wear football shirts, sit on tatty sofas and dream of Gordon Banks. This is the template for male friendship, British-style. Showing off to each other, laughing at each other's jokes, insulting each other.

"I was stopped by a bloke who runs an Italian restaurant," says Baddiel. "He asked, 'Your friend ... why he call you a hairy Jew?'" The answer was contained within the question, of course.

Skinner "can't remember the exact context, but you've got to admit it's not a bad thumbnail description." But Frank has just moved in with his girlfriend, radio presenter Caroline Ferraday. He was asked on Richard and Judy if they were going to get married; to protect his friend from the tricky question, Baddiel made an "engaged" pun so bad that "you could hear tumbleweed blowing round the studio". It was something incomprehensible about the phone line being engaged: that's true friendship for you.

Baddiel kept the cat; Caroline brought a new one with her, and Frank's now considering acquiring a Staffordshire bull-terrier. "You could just have a child," I suggest. Frank shakes his head: "They're no good with intruders." David, meanwhile, "sort of semi lives with" the comic actress and writer Morwenna Banks. "She has her own house as well, so we have a sort of Mia Farrow/Woody Allen thing." (Though without, one assumes, the borderline insanity, allegations of child abuse and clarinet.)

It is a relief, then, to hear that Frank drops round for these informal cups of tea. It would be sad if the boys only met for expensive dinners out as a foursome: they're not supposed to be Smug Marrieds, and we'd all feel older.

They've just begun a season of Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned live in the West End. This entirely improvised show was always intended as a live event; it works on television, "but as Samuel Johnson said of Paradise Lost," says Frank, "'no man ever wished it longer'. Do be sure to mention that I quoted Samuel Johnson."