Some contrived spontaneity and a lot of laughs

My favourite part of the day is just before I wake up, when everything is going just right and is under control. There are days when you wake up and don't feel like going and being funny, but that's part of the job; I try to wake up basically happy and just go out and be really serious but with a silly storyline.

People don't expect me to be funny all the time - they know I am not that kind of comedian . . . I don't make people laugh.

We travel around Ireland. The programme is like a low-budget travel show - I like travelling a lot, I think it's in the blood. The producer decides on a number of locations we could go to, then we choose where we are going and a storyline and what we want to concentrate on in the event.

We actually have production meetings in the car on the way to the places we are shooting. We decide what we are going to do, how many interviews we are going to get. We even borrow clothes off people passing by if we are going to do characters - we just grab hats and coats and tell them we will give them back later.

The show is meant to be informative. There is a narrative running through it, but we contrivedly end up interviewing people and event organisers who just "happen to be there".

There is actually no other format of a show that's like this, so it was kind of strange getting used to it and fitting into it. We were given guidelines about the documentary nature of the show; we have to interview certain people and the rest is up to us as to how we work out the stories. To get a half-hour programme out of a two day shoot is hard work. It can become a strain on everybody, but the crew gets on well - it's a good little unit.

The working day ranges from four to 12 hours. Normally it's just your standard eight hour day, though. We generally shoot two days a week and sometimes another half day on "pick-ups" (scenes shot in the studio). That's pretty much us for the week then.

Most of the scenes are done in one take because a lot of the programme is made up of improvised stuff or interviews and you don't get more than one take. With some of the sketches you might have more takes.

We write ideas for sketches before we go somewhere and then we flesh it out wherever we are, taking things from the environment and how we feel at the time.

Generally when you are filming you just try and go for it and forget how you feel - unless you are feeling great, and then you try and remember how you feel. It is about being professional, but it is about being amateur as well - you don't worry about the technical side of things, when to be on which ship or whatever.

But you are always worrying about the weather. Some days it can be lashing with rain and you have to change the whole schedule and spend all day indoors. I am much more nervous about live gigs than with TV. I actually don't like having to stand up and make loads of people laugh. I would prefer just to make myself laugh and hope other people enjoy it in their armchairs.

Messrs Tylak and Rooney runs on Tuesdays at 8 p.m.

In an interview with Paul Tanney.