Dylan Moran, 32, was born in London and grew up in Ireland. A stand-up comedian, he won the Perrier award in 1996. He has gone on to write and star, as Bernard Black, in Channel 4's BAFTA-winning sitcom, 'Black Books' and has also appeared in Simon Nye's 'How do you want me?' and the feature film, 'The Actors' alongside Michael Caine. He lives in Edinburgh.

Born in Devizes in Wiltshire, Bill Bailey, 39, originally wanted to be a rock star. Instead he incorporated his prodigious musical talent into his unique stand-up comedy. He is a team captain on BBC2's 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks' and plays Bernard's sidekick, Manny in Black Books. Married, he has a young son and lives in London.

Dylan Moran:

Ten or so years ago, we'd see one another in the London clubs, a sort of nodding acquaintance, but the first time I remember talking to Bill was in one of those typical, dreary, provincial hotels where you have to give your grandmother's maiden name to get a drink after 11pm. We bumped into one another, while gigging around the country, and collapsed, knackered on a sofa and had a very desultory chat about the thrills 'n' spills of service station food and touring. I didn't know him terribly well at all, but he was wise and friendly.
Comedians are often depicted as being cut-throat, and they can be, but he's the absolute opposite. I'm sure he was saying, "Don't worry about it," if I was complaining or worrying about doing these dreadful, low-rent gigs. When you're doing the tougher ones, it's more crowd management than anything. You don't really get a chance to try anything interesting. You just have to learn the trade, really.
Another cliché about comics is that they're always "on" - always working the room, trying to make someone laugh, trying to outdo each other. Bill doesn't go for that at all. I don't think he has an iota of machismo in him. He's running on some other kind of juice. Bill outdoes people by opening a packet of crisps and looking out the window and making some passing comment. People go on holiday when they talk to Bill. He draws people to him. If he's in a room, people skip over to him the way you do to a fire when you come in from the pouring rain.
A clever lady called Jane Davies cast Bill [in Black Books], this is going back some time, now, 1998 or 1999, but I remember my first thought was, "That's a brilliant idea," and second, "He's going to be much funnier than me."
Black Books is tediously good fun, I'm afraid. There's a lot of laughing and a lot of graft. Bill's a bit all over the place, he wanders off - in the rehearsal room, we'll be talking about a scene and we'll say, "Right, let's do it," and we'll t urn around and he's not there - but never in such a way as he can't get it together when he needs to. He is a great comic partner.
We talk about anything and everything. It's like one ongoing endless conversation, a symposium of utter rubbish, two amnesiac gadflies discussing whatever pops into their heads. The director was always screaming at us to stop talking about food, which gave me and Bill an idea for a series that we're talking about: two rubbish detectives who go to solve murders cases but are only interested in the nearby delicatessens - baguettes in their hands when looking at bodies.
You always see interviews where people are saying, "I love this guy so much, he's such a fantastic human being, he makes Mother Teresa look like a Hell's Angel," and, unfortunately, I get the one where the guy is like that. I'm kind of annoyed. I'd love to be able to say he's difficult or he's got some terrible flaw, he's talented but self-destructive or something, but he's not.
I really cannot imagine what it would be like to fall out with Bill. Unless there's some kind of arcane transgression that I could make, that I'm not aware of, like if I touched his tuna sandwich and he stormed off. I'd be interested to find out what thing that would be.
I presume there are times when Bill is wigged-out and stressed, but he only displays it as by being funny. I've seen him a bit glittery eyed with fatigue after a show, but half-an-hour later he's reconstituted himself and you're nodding and laughing and prawns are coming out of your nose. He's freakish in his good naturedness.

Bill Bailey:

I distinctly remember doing a gig with Dylan at Jongleurs in Battersea, 10 or 12 years ago. I remember thinking that what he was doing was very different to a lot of stand-ups. He had this stage persona, a bit like Bernard Black, that was instantly recognisable: slightly dishevelled appearing to be slightly drunk and permanently pissed off, railing against the world and its failings. He did this long routine, which he acted out in a really physical way, he'd throw himself into it, working himself up into a boiling frenzy.
We ran into each other at various points but it's since we've been doing the TV stuff that we've really got to know each other. On-set there's a lot of silliness, a lot of trying to put the other person off - changing lines to try to trip the other person up. That's always quite amusing. But it is quite serious. I feel I want to do justice to the script and the people who work on it.
It's very different from a lot of sitcoms. The writing is a lot richer and the characterisation is rounded. Like all really good sitcoms, though, there is an air of despair about it, a sense of people being trapped in the situation, being stuck with a certain group of people because they're the only ones who'll put up with them. A lot of people respond to that. And they love the surreal nature, the hyper-reality of it.
It also strikes a chord with people because in Bernard's ranting and raving, a lot of things are included where people think, "Yeah, I'd like to sound off about mobile phones or fast-food outlets or general mediocrity.
It is Dylan to a degree. We have great conversations about music and popular culture and get ourselves into a right state. I'm a terrible gadget monkey, and we'll have a talk about phones where I'll go, "Look, it can do this and this." and Dylan just looks at me with, just pity.
Dylan is well read, very intelligent and he's got a very descriptive turn of phrase. As another comic, that's what I particularly admire. A lot of the time you're trying to nail that phrase and when you hear it done very lyrically, almost poetically, it's something that writers appreciate.
He cares a great deal and he's analytical. I was talking to him just last night about going on tour and looking at the way other people do comedy. He's got, I suppose, an intellectual approach to it, as well as the instinctive and unconsciously funny thing which I gravitate towards. If you get into writing it's very hard not to be like that. It's very hard not to process information comedically, not to tell a joke and say, "Why is that funny?" Because you often don't know.
The conversations we usually have are about comedy in literature and great bits of writing. You can write what you think is the greatest joke but, somehow, in front of an audience it transmutes into some other thing. I think that, maybe, is where Dylan is obsessive, or not obsessive, but fascinated.
We don't tend to have heart-to-he arts much. We have done, but recently, we've talked much more about books, films, brandies, restaurants and food. Dylan is an epicurean, an aesthete, a lover of finer things. That's all we talk about, different kinds of foods, different ways of eating food and places you can go to eat food.
Dylan is very thoughtful and sensitive. He is, I think, a real old-fashioned wit, in the Swiftian mode. He thinks deeply about things and is, basically, a mercurial mind.