Interview: Sheeps

The year is 2014. I’m at the Fringe watching a sketch trio called Sheeps perform at the Bedlam Theatre. The group are warming up for their upcoming 'Wembley Stadium' show with an Edinburgh run, fine tuning their act ahead of the biggest night of their lives. Only that’s all they do. One sketch, set in an aquarium, is fought over and disassembled. I sit there in tears, thinking this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Like the best stuff in this realm it's clever, but prioritizes the ludicrous over the cerebral. And I’m struck by the chemistry of the trio; Liam Williams, Daran Johnson and Al Roberts find each other hilarious and, to be quite honest, seem to love one another.

Talking to them a decade on, it’s clear they do. Sheeps are back with their first hour of new material in six years. In the interim they’ve been busy flourishing independently as creatives. Williams published his first novel (Homes and Experiences), created the BBC series Ladhood and wrote and starred in Pls Like. Johnson’s writing credits include Parlement and Cartoon Network’s Elliott From Earth (with additional research suggesting work on Salmon Fishing In The Yemen and Seinfeld, you decide). Roberts had an understated but scene stealing turn in the uniquely brilliant Stath Lets Flats, playing Al, his downtrodden namesake, bouncing off the Demetriou siblings’ frenetic energy perfectly. But love, for each other, for working together, and for the craft, brings them back to Edinburgh as a unit.

"It’s sillier to do it the older you get," Johnson says of the reunion. "It feels harder and harder to justify why you’re doing it and that makes it funnier. There’s a joke under every joke which is 'why on earth are you doing this?'"

Two years ago the group performed a greatest hits style compilation show (the factually inaccurate but brilliantly titled Ten Years, Ten Laughs) which, rather than acting as a coda to a then 12 year partnership, suggested there was more to come. "The bits we enjoyed doing the most were the eight new minutes in that hour," Johnson says. "So we were partly curious to see if we could do it."

Where the writing and rehearsal of the early Sheeps shows were characterised by, as Johnson puts it, "having quite extraordinary amounts of free time in the house together", the creation of The Giggle Bunch (That’s Our Name For You) has been more regimented, out of necessity, with Roberts producing rehearsals. Williams says: "We’ve carved out days in a way that's more appropriate with being middle aged and taking our working lives more seriously. But it’s still been fun."

It’s probably for the best that the group aren’t living together anymore, even if that intensity is at the root of their creative synergy. "There was a period of four years," Johnson says, "where it was really weird for me if I was in a room and neither of the other two were. The only friends we had in London were also mutual friends. If we were going to the party the other two would be there. There was a solid year where none of us had partners or went on a date, we only saw each other. By the end of it we were on a pretty clear wavelength."

Expect the Sheeps to revel in pushing those shared sensibilities, with no real thought of a bigger stage for their specific brand of surreal comedy. ‘If the agenda was to get a TV show commissioned, Williams deadpans, "this would be the worst possible way to go about it. It would be fun, it’s just not a conscious motivation anymore."

For Roberts, the main reward is to work with Williams and Johnson after their years together. "It’s exciting to present a sketch to these guys and see what they think, to try and surprise each other, to try and make each other laugh. Nothing else that I’m doing feels like it comes close. Johnson nods in agreement: "Anything else I’m doing I just wonder, 'Will Liam and Al find it funny?' They’re my best friends. It’s nice to do a thing together. It’s fun to do a show just to make the show fun rather than to another end."