Sketches and snoods: a nice chat with Cardinal Burns

Dustin Demri-Burns (the dark-haired one) and Seb Cardinal (the squint-and-he-looks-like-Neil Patrick Harris one) have long been lauded on the comedy circuit for taking their audiences with them on energetic, thoughtful sketches. Their epically-delayed TV debut – we tipped it in a magazine article ten ruddy months ago – finally broke on E4 this spring and was somehow even better, packing in mini-plots to six tight episodes, rather than just serving as catchphrase vehicles. They are, in short, great.

 

Let’s start with an appalling-quality clip that nonetheless proves the point:

 

 

Point proven.

 

The first question was provided by previous interviewee, character comedian and Pulitzer winner-in-waiting Cariad Lloyd (our chat with whom will be emerging later this week). 

 

Seb: We're waiting to hear about whether we get a series and we're still writing for Edinburgh and getting ready for Latitude in two weeks. We're writing as if we've got the second series, just because it's comfortable for us.

 

Dustin: They were worried about it clashing, first of all with Celebrity Juice, and they wanted to give us a really good slot.

 

Seb: I guess it crosses over and any cross over you want to avoid, especially as it's our first time and no-one knew us.

 

Dustin: They seemed pretty happy. And it's been well-received critically, and on Twitter, with the teenagers, and with our peers. We're really happy it was critically well-received. 

 

Dustin: To a point. I think it changed naturally. We didn't have a perfect idea what we'd have, it sort of evolved.

Seb: By midway through the writing we had quite an idea of how it should be. 

Dustin: And a very clear idea of what it shouldn't be. We wanted stories happening within the sketches, and not just be premise-led.

 

Dustin: We never wanted catchphrases. A couple of the Young Dreams girls tend to get quoted – you batch, Rachel pwease...it gets hashtagged.

 

Seb: That was to do with the nudity.

 

Dustin: Yeah. I think it's from the opening trailer as well, before it even started...

 

Dustin: It's a weird thing. Do we do it that much?

 

Dustin: It's you more than me I think. 

Seb: Nudity is quite funny. I love the way with Will Ferrell you always see him naked. You're vulnerable, I think.

Dustin: That's why I like you do it more than me.

 

Seb: I did have one point I was doing a speech as the new guy and I was naked except for a snood.

Dustin: A little snood.

Seb: A massive snood, and it just kept falling off. I had to do a big long speech time after time and it just kept falling off.

 

Seb: There was a girl who's job was literally to tape this thing on, and I'd just have to be, like, I'm sorry about this.

 

Seb: Yeah, we did go around the houses with those characters. The Scottish guys is just such a live thing. We did think about them going into different environments and taking over, but it was just a bit flat. There was one idea where they are two brothers hosting Christmas, in a very passive aggressive way, and shout their family down like they're their employees.

Dustin: It was quite a learning curve from the live stuff. You have a set of characters but as you go on you realise some won't work on screen, and you have to constantly adapt. 

 

Dustin: One whole strand, about a Northern Irish guy called Ray working in a call centre – he's about 60-odd and everyone else is about 20, and he's completely out of place and behind the times. It was funny when we read it and performed it, even, and then in the edit we just had to cut it. It was too gentle, like a sitcom. It was a shame because we spent two days doing that.

 

Seb: as you write sketches you always have one eye on if any of them present themselves as sitcom material. 

Dustin: We're just really focusing on the next step which will hopefully be another series of the sketch show.

 

Dustin: they'll be surprised. It won't be us doing cameos of the ones you've seen on telly. It's quite raucous. When we started doing live work we did it with stand-ups rather than sketch groups. We're trying to do stuff to the audience more, like the Scottish guys. But sometimes you bring it back to sketches because you just want a performance that isn't desperate to please. Plus there's the odd video clip.

 

 

They are playing the Underbelly tomorrow – tomorrow! – tickets for which are here. They are also doing the Pleasance for the last week of Edinburgh, tickets here.