Is it feminist comedy? Girly gags? The three stars of Smack the Pony make Gareth McLean laugh.
If you watch Smack the Pony, you will know about their video-dating sketches. If not, imagine a cast of odd women - from those who say "I don't care much for personal hygiene but I swallow" to one in a panda suit - on the look out for love. Leftfield, laugh-out-loud and occasionally tender, it seems wholly appropriate then, to ask Sally Phillips, Doon Mackichan and Fiona Allen to describe each other in the style of the sketch. They start laughing. In the two hours I spend in their company, they do a lot of laughing. So do I. It's hard not to. "I'll be really nice about you if you're really nice about me, Phillips says to Allen, who can't think what to say. After a moment of Allen groaning, her mind blank, Phillips smiles. "I defy definition." Then Mackichan, just as she does in the show, adopts a funny voice and offers a take on Phillips. "I live in west London, I've got writer's block but I'm looking for someone who helps me through that, makes me breakfast and drives a motorbike." Phillips and Allen are in hysterics.
Mackichan then turns her attention to Allen and, in a deep, sexy voice, says: "Hello. I'm really satisfied with my life. I love my husband to pieces, I've got a beautiful daughter and I'm going to have a big house in the country with a pool. I need a cleaner and a new au pair." There is more laughing and a remark from Phillips. "Doon has got a stupid amount of energy, can mimic any noise - mechanical or animal - and can stick her arse out." "En masse," Mackichan continues, "Our video date would be 'We're looking for a film crew in Spain who want to shoot us in the afternoons only'. " "With happy hour off," Phillips adds. "And long, long paella lunches," Mackichan finishes.
Allen, whose mother is Spanish, nods firmly. "Now that would be great. We did have a plan to film this series of Smack in Spain because it is cheaper. I still think we should do something out there." She is only half-joking but the room is in fits.
Even if, on my arrival, the three women weren't cooing over Allen's daughter (Honey, who is one) and swapping stories of children's birthdays (Mackichan's daughter, India, needs a birthday party organised), I would have felt as though I were intruding slightly on a group of friends. Thanks to their busy schedules, this is the first time the three have seen each other properly in months. Mackichan has been been filming a drama in Newcastle with Robson Green, Phillips has just finished playing the lead in Rescue Me in which she snogs Vincent Regan ("Not with tongues; he just got married") and is writing a comedy pilot for BBC2. Allen, it seems, has been standing mesmerised in petrol station forecourts.
"I don't know if it happened to you, Doon, when you had your kids, but I have been on another planet. Twice now, I went to the petrol station, I got out the car and flipped open the petrol cap ready to fill it. Then I just stood there on the forecourt pointing the ignition key into the petrol tank. Then it dawned on me what I was doing and I was suddenly mortified in case anyone had seen me. I just kept standing there. Then I put my petrol in and went home." By the end of the story, even Allen is smirking at her hormonal loopiness.
Brought together in 1998 by producer Victoria Pile, Mackichan, Allen and Phillips have made quite an impression. Rave reviews, ample audiences and two - count 'em - international Emmys mark Smack the Pony's dizzying rise. While initially it was label led as everything from girlycom to feminist comedy, now it is just known for being close to brilliant, one of the best sketch shows of recent years.
Allen, who is fierce and funny and frank, is irked by labels. "I find it insulting when people label you feminist. Women get up in the morning and do a job just like a bloke does. I think it's patronising to women and I don't think staunch feminists realise that. They say, 'You're a feminist' and you're like, 'No, I'm a woman'. "
The women also dispute the notion that their comedy is predominantly about female competitiveness. "What's competitive about someone who's got a really hairy chuff and someone who doesn't?" Mackichan asks, thankfully rhetorically. "That's not competitive, it's just funny."
To ensure such a consistently high strike rate, the three women and Pile, their producer, work through a hefty pile of scripts before filming and writing their own share of sketches. Even after that, they are rigorous about what makes the final cut. "There are times when the three of us are standing there like footballers appealing against a red card," says Phillips, who seems to have a more intellectual approach to life than her colleagues, "dressed as lesbian policewomen with moustaches pleading 'But it's hilarious! Can't you see? It's funny!' and Victoria's, like 'It's just not funny. Moving on . . .' "
There are, Mackichan confirms, a load of sketches which have never been seen. "There's the Mexican cleaners, the three of us in a lift, the army girls clubbing, the minimalist flat, the three girls trying to set up a sex website." "Has that not gone in?" Allen inquires as she changes Honey's nappy. "I don't think so," Mackichan replies. "There'll be a really good bootleg episode somewhere . . ." Now, after the third series, Mackichan, Phillips and Allen seem ready to call it quits. For the time being, anyway. "I think everyone's had enough of it," Phillips says.
"We'll definitely work together again but it might not be that format," Allen says. "We could, if we wanted and people liked us, turn up and do something but the idea has to be right. It's more about the idea, rather than just for the sake of sticking your face on telly. I think it's important to do it properly. When it's something that really matters and it's something everyone's got energy for, that's what makes a good piece of telly or whatever. If we're all alive at 60 and decide to do something, then fine. But we're not desperate."
"We have to be very interested," Mackichan says. As well as separate projects, they are working together on something and when Mackichan floats the idea of a three-week stint in a London theatre, it is met with approving noises. They all seem a bit disappointed not to have been in Lord of the Rings. "I would have worn prosthetic feet," Phillips maintains.
In the meantime, however, they will coo over Honey, marvel at Mackichan's swimming regime ("She goes to a freezing cold lido. It's outside and there are twigs, and insects trying to lay their eggs in your ears," Allen explains) and express their horror that last week, an interviewer asked Allen if she fancied her father-in-law, Michael Parkinson. In 2000, she married Michael junior, a television producer whom she met on the pilot of Smack the Pony. "I just said, 'Oh my God'," Allen says, "and this person was like, 'Seriously, do you? Because I do.' Eeeww." Phillips will jokingly bemoan her single status, Mackichan will confess that she is a martyr to her sinuses before demonstrating her Whistling Actress voice ("Sex and the City is sponsored by Baileys") and Allen will reveal that in a poll of People that you Fancy who are Verging on Boilers (in Viz, it transpires) she was number 71. "I got called a martian-faced funny lady," she grins broadly, flashing perfect teeth. "I think Claire Sweeney was number one." For no reason other than it's getting to be a habit, the room erupts with laughter.
Smack the Pony is on Channel 4 on Fridays at 9.30 p.m. The Best of Smack the Pony is available on video and DVD
- Guardian News Service