THE comedy comes thick and fast, bubbling over with surreal situations, hideous characters and proper laugh-out-loud moments.
Scottish comic duo Stevens & McCarthy are back on telly with a new series, and they have graduated from 15-minute snippets to full-blown, rapid-fire, half-hour sketch shows.
“Generally we got a pretty positive response to the first series, from people, like women in Asda,” nods Louise. “They’d say, aye, loved your show, but it was too short."
Gayle chips in. “It could have been worse,” she says. “They could have been saying it was too long.”
The characters - wicked pensioners, a gamer mum losing it, millennials, Scottish Barbies – tumble over each other in a relentless stream of the witty, the wild and the weird.
“It all comes from having gigged together over the years, being stuck in cars on the way home at 3am, just talking about stuff,” explains Louise.
“A lot of it comes from life too – you’re doing something and think, that’s a sketch, write that down.”
Gayle agrees. “You can find sketches in everything,” she nods.
Stevens & McCarthy is the first of three new Scottish comedy series from Scotland with Only Child (starring Gregor Fisher and Greg McHugh) and The Chief (starring Jack Docherty) to follow.
The Scottish comedy scene is thriving, says Gayle.
“I really hope it is,” she says. “Dinosaur [Ashley Storrie’s BAFTA Scotland-nominated sitcom] which came out last year and was really well-received, is flying the flag for Scottish comedy.
“Scottish people are really funny, so there should be a good scene."
She adds: “And it’s coming into winter, so we all need a laugh, don’t we?”
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If comedy shows are growing in number, it is still rare to see women-led versions. Both Gayle and Louise cite Dorothy Paul and The Steamie as huge influences on them as young performers.
“There’s not a lot for women to identify in comedy shows that are led by men,” adds Gayle. “We don’t laugh at the same things.”
Louise says: “Dorothy Paul represented normal working class women, with kids, to-do-lists...she was drawing on real people.”
Gayle, who plays colourful, chaotic Caitlin McLean on BBC Scotland drama series River City, and Louise, known for her roles in police spoof Scot Squad and The Scotts, had similar beginnings in the industry.
“We both went to London to do musical theatre, and at that time, very few people were leaving Glasgow to pursue that other world,” says Louise, who is from Maryhill.
“I’d heard of that Gayle Telfer Stevens, who went to that London to do musical theatre.”
She grins: “And that made me want to go to that London, to be like Gayle Telfer Stevens. Then, we met at a cabaret night, and our partnership grew from that.”
As well as the telly sketch show, the duo also perform as gallus Glasgow cleaners The Dolls, another nod to the likes of Dorothy Paul, Francie and Josie and slightly nostalgic, slightly anarchic Scottish comedy.
Gayle’s love of comedy goes back to her childhood, growing up in Renton.
“I just loved making people laugh at school,” she says, simply. “I used to ask teachers if they got a winch at the weekend.”
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She adds, hastily: “Which was really not appropriate, and I tell my daughter don’t you EVER ask a teacher that.
“But I loved being the class clown. I saw school as a social exercise in the 90s.”
Being funny also got her out of a few “sticky situations”, she adds.
“When you’re up against a school bully, and you say something funny, it can pull them down a peg or two,” she says.
Louise says she “never set out to be funny.”
“I never thought I was funny, in fact,” she admits. “In the house I grew up in, comedy was currency. It meant you got the floor.
“It was a busy house - my mum had a big family, so half the time you were just trying to get a word in edgeways, one singer one song, and all that.”
She laughs: “Being funny, singing a song, telling a joke - it meant you got a wee bit of attention.”
Stevens and McCarthy starts October 7 at 10.40pm on BBC One Scotland.
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