The Noble art of utter gibberish

I met Noble and Silver backstage at the Hen and Chickens in Highbury, as we were on a double bill. I was putting on my slap and my false eyelashes and my glamourous costume, and there were these two rather nervous young men with ginger sideburns pissing around with videos and making microwave dinners backstage before the show to give to people in the audience.

I was doing my cheesy showbiz stuff, and at that time nobody had really heard of them, so people were coming to see me and saying, "You were great, but who the f**k are those weird boys?" I just thought, Jesus, drugs are good these days. They were absolutely mad but utterly charming.

I find them very, very funny indeed. They do a lot of slow dancing to Chris De Burgh's 'Lady In Red' as a prequel to absolutely nothing. Their act is surreal, baffling, delightful nonsense. It is utter gibberish but it makes you feel glad to be alive. And they work really, really hard. The haphazard look of the show is actually disguising a lot of really careful planning and attention to detail.

We shared a flat in Edinburgh last year and Kim and Stu (Noble and Silver) were just so funny around the flat, always doing these surreal improvisations. And it was the year they won the Perrier Best Newcomer Award. Which was most odd as they got shocking reviews there and I was consoling them with 'Who gives a shit what the Scotsmen say anyway, etc' but thinking 'poor bastards, it's not going very well'. Then two weeks later they won the award so they were absolutely gobsmacked.

I imagine there'll be some quite odd and spontaneous things going on at their West End debut this month, but their shows are not all wanky. It's like being with the weird art students at college who you always thought were a bit odd, but you wanted to be in their gang because they must be clever or mad. And either one of those is fine.

Jackie Clune's Bitchin' Christmas shows at the Arts Theatre from Monday 3 December.