Hugh Dennis talks improvising, comedy and why he owes it all to Jasper Carrott ahead of show The Messiah at the Birmingham REP

He is an utterly pleasant man, as lovely in real life as he is on TV. And he’s just as funny too. Hugh Dennis – star of Outnumbered, Not Going Out, Mock The Week and The Mary Whitehouse Experience, among others, frequently takes conversational detours that are wry and amusing – to us and to him.

So he offers a lengthy exposition about his love of Birmingham and his debt of gratitude to Second City comic Jasper Carrot, an hilarious segue into his former job as brand manager for Lynx deodorant and more.

But we start with his new show, The Messiah, which is on at the Birmingham REP until October 27. It also stars opera singer Lesley Garrett and comedy actor John Marquez and will be the funniest and most magical nativity you’ll probably ever see. After its engagement in Birmingham, it heads around the UK before starting a West End run.

The action centres on a travelling theatre troupe of two actors and an opera singer who are set to arrive on camel-back in Birmingham to masterfully enact the greatest story ever told. Maurice Rose, played by Hugh Dennis, is joined by the alarmingly unpredictable Ronald Bream RAC, played by John Marquez, and the distinguished diva Mrs Doreen Small, played by Lesley Garrett, in a hilarious Christmas comedy that conjures up the sublime, the ridiculous and the truly angelic.

Joseph, Mary, the Archangel Gabriel, Herod, God and an ox are all authentically portrayed in a vibrant comedy that weaves visual invention with a hint of the divine, making The Messiah a love letter to theatre, theology and the great man himself.

It was created by The 39 Steps writer, Patrick Barlow, who will also direct the production. Patrick’s stage version of The 39 Steps ran in the West End for nine years.

Hugh agreed to star because of his friendship with Patrick. “Patrick is a very funny man. A very, very funny man. The Messiah is a kind of rewritten revival of a show he did with Jim Broadbent in 1983. It’s been through various versions and when I got the call I did wonder why I’d been asked to do it.

“But I loved the script and I honestly think it’s just great. It’s about two middle-aged men who are putting on a nativity play. It’s sort of about that and a lot of it’s also about angst and loss and midlife crisis. It’s a funny piece.”

Hugh has enjoyed working with his co-stars, the Coventry-born John Marquez, who’s best known for his role as PC Joe Penhale in the hit ITV Comedy series, Doc Martin, and who also featured in Porridge, In the Club, Death in Paradise, Hotel Babylon and Suburban Shootout; and Lesley Garret, Britain’s best-known soprano.

“We went through that lovely bit at the start of rehearsals when we weren’t panicking. Then as the show got closer, we managed to suppress the panic before it became fully blown. Rehearsing for me is a kind of strange phenomenon because you don’t get to do that on telly. On Outnumbered, for instance, you don’t rehearse it, it’s just done.

“It’s a good team though and Lesley is great. She’s lovely. She’s very up for it. There’s a lot of physical stuff in it. We all have to pretend to be riding camels in a rather crass kind of way.”

Hugh enjoys flitting from TV to radio to stage. The variety gives him the opportunity to flex different muscles and learn new lessons.

“Yes, I like the mix. With this, we’re in Birmingham to start then we head off around the UK and do a few more shows before coming to the West End before Christmas. Being on stage in a theatre is scarier than doing TV because there’s no edits. If you do a panel show, they take three hours to get half an hour and they can edit in the funny bits. You’ve got retakes and all the rest of it. This is very different.”

Indeed it is. And there’s something else that’s different too. On Outnumbered, the script continually changed and the children – Jake, Ben and Karen – were given free licence to improvise and pull rabbits from hats. In The Messiah, Hugh gets to repeat the same lines, word for word, every night for three months. He still can’t get his head around that bit.

“What I’ve always thought is slightly weird about live theatre is that thing of saying the same thing at the same time every night for three months. It’s such a weird concept, it’s so odd. It’s like rerunning this interview with the same words this time tomorrow, then again on Wednesday, then again on Thursday. You’d go out of your mind and the thought of that does my head in. But every audience is different and that’s what changes the show. It’s good. The other difference is that we’re on tour, rather than going home. But I’ve done a lot of touring with Steve Punt, which was great. Normally, we’d do one night in a town then be on to the next, but at least with this we get to stay for a while.”

Hugh remains one of the nation’s favourite comedy actors. His stand-up, radio shows and work on comedy panel shows and Outnumbered have made him something of a national treasure. Lest we forget, Outnumbered drew huge audiences, with more than nine million people tuning in for the one-off specials. He imagines the team will get back together to do more.

His career started at Cambridge University, where he studied at St John’s College and met Steve Punt. His peer group also included such characters as Nick Hancock, who went on to host Room 101 and They Think It’s All Over, among other shows. Whilst at university, he also had a brush with the intelligence service, MI-5, which asked him to attend a preliminary interview. He might have got the job had he not baulked when they told him the job would require him to do people over.

Hugh went off to work for Unilever for six years, becoming the brand manager for Lynx deodorant, while doing comedy shows at the weekend.

“I only have a career because of Jasper Carrot, so I owe everything to Birmingham in a weird sort of way. In the mid-to-late 1980s, Jasper would come to the Comedy Store and one night after seeing Steve and I he told us he’d got a live TV show on the BBC on Saturday nights and would we like to be in it? I had a full-time job at that point and was doing comedy for fun. Can you imagine that? You’re doing a comedy show and suddenly you’re asked to play a Saturday night live on BBC in front of 13 million people? Nobody does that anymore.

“We did Jasper’s show and I thought it was brilliant because I could carry on as my other job. I owe Birmingham – in the form of Jasper – a huge amount. I was the brand manager of Lynx, which is a slightly strange thing, at that time. I kept on doing both for a time and we worked with Japser for five years. Then from Monday to Friday I was back on the deodorant.”

The constant of Hugh’s career has been his double act with Steve Punt. They played together in The Imaginatively Titled Punt & Dennis show and Punt & Dennis. That partnership has formed the bedrock to a career that has also included work on Spitting Image, The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Brass Eye, Doctors, Jack Dee’s Happy Hour, Hotel Babylon, Fleabag, The Zoo and more.

“Steve and I still get on very well but writing partnerships have changed. In the old days you had to be in the same room. But these days, you spend most of the time in completely different spaces then fire off an email or have a phone conversation. You can do lots of other stuff and still have that partnership. I feel very lucky that we’ve been together for so long.”

He has only fond memories for Outnumbered, the show which started in 2007 and ran for five series and a number of specials. Earlier this year, he confirmed he was in a relationship with his on-screen wife, Claire Skinner, having left his wife, Kate Abbot-Anderson. We don’t talk about that today – it’s a condition of the interview – and Hugh has been silent about it throughout.

He does, however, talk about Outnumbered and his affection is clear. “It was an amazingly enjoyable thing to do because it was done with such a light touch. The whole thing was completely non-prescriptive. There was a script, though not so much for the kids, and we were gently guided. It was a proper team effort. It was about the kids and the parents. When we were filming it, it was like living in a commune. I’m not entirely certain it’s over. We’ll probably do some more specials at some point. I think one of the beautiful things about it was the kids. We never knew what they were going to say, especially Karen, and we’d wonder where their ideas would come from. They’d improvise and make us laugh and there were times when it was difficult to stay in character.”

Remarkably, Hugh might still be flogging deodorant had his entry into comedy not been a success. When he enrolled at Cambridge, he was surrounded by a number of people who knew they wanted to pursue comedy as a career. Such performers as Steve Punt, Nick Hancock and the renowned Shakespearian/Rocky Horror actor/producer Chris Luscombe signed up with a view to using Cambridge as a springboard for a career in the arts. Hugh didn’t.

“I did Footlights for the last year and then ended up at Unilever. Others who went to university just to do comedy. For me, comedy came about by chance. I didn’t think I’d ever earn a living from it. I think if no one had laughed at my first show, I’d probably still be running Lynx. I’d be doing Lynx Malaysia, I’d have an international career.”

He’s glad he had Steve Punt to share the ups and downs with. “It’s a great experience being half of a double act. It gives you someone to talk to or share the pain with. Touring as a single stand-up must be really hard.”

It’s almost time for Hugh to go. When we speak, he’s still in rehearsal and running to a tight schedule. He needs to learn lines and work with Lesley and others to make sure things go without hitch. There’s just time for further reflections on Birmingham and a show that was the best he ever saw.

“I remember doing a show in Birmingham with Rowan Atkinson for the NSPCC in the early 1980s. Rowan was the funniest person I’ve ever worked with. I’ve never seen an audience reaction like the one he got, either before or since. Standing at the side of the stage, it was like you could physically feel the laughter. It was like being hit by wind. He was astonishingly funny. He was just great. But there’s a whole array of people I’ve worked with, including some who were very funny. The one I’d have liked to work with was Eric Morecombe, but that will never happen of course.”

And that’s it. He’ll keep himself in shape when he’s back in Birmingham by playing football, running or visiting a gallery. Hugh is renowned for his fitness and is a capable cyclist, runner and footballer. “Touring is funny. During the day, you feel vaguely sick from the moment you wake up until the curtain goes up. Then after the show, there’s a huge release. You have an hour after the show when you bask in the afterglow, then you realise you have to do it again tomorrow and the nerves creep in. You sort of feel ‘bleurgh’ all day. But there’s lots to do. I’ll go running, play or watch football, that sort of thing.”