When you're watching stand-up on telly, do you wish your heckles could be heard? Well, why not invite a pair of comics to do their routine, live in your living room. Steve Charnock did just that, then quizzed Chris Dangerfield and Trevor Lock in a post-show chinwag.

How's that list of 'Things you love in places you didn't know you could love them until very recently' been getting on? What do you mean you've not been making one? Why not? Well, start making one. And after you've finished writing 'wanking at work', put down 'live comedy in your living room'.

You can now put that on your list (just before 'wanking on trains', no doubt) because one of this country’s finest stand-up comedians - the unique Trevor Lock - has embarked on a nationwide tour of the dingy lounges of scruffy sods like you. Along with the brilliant Chris Dangerfield, a man described by Will Self as 'a very, very amusing fellow - funnier than an unsuspected lump sought out by horror-stricken fingers' and Brighton-based Joey Page, Lock is skulking the sitting rooms of comedy fans around the UK to ‘reinvent the meaning of live comedy, proving that the spirit of anarchy and punk is still alive.’

So in the name of investigative journalism and as a long-awaited excuse for me to charge my friends an entrance fee into my house, I booked them to play my living room. I don’t think the fact that I have a social life that even the most unpopular and agoraphobic hermit crab would be ashamed of should have any bearing when I say that it was one of the best nights (in) I’ve had in a long time. No cab fares, no tricky decisions on which shoes to wear, no £5 pints and no queue for the toilet. Well, there was a bit of a queue, but it was my house so I could piss in the sink without having to worry. As per usual.

I caught up with Trevor and Chris afterwards and made them answer some questions. Because it was my fucking house and I’d paid for them (and locked them in).

Alright?

Chris Dangerfield: Yes thanks, I think I picked up a touch of cholera the other night at a gig, but I've managed to shake it.
Trevor Lock: And I’m okay, thank you, although I'm a bit stiff from playing cricket at Lord’s where I hit the winning runs off the last ball of the match.

Really...? So how's the tour going?

CD: One of the exciting things about this project was having no expectations. I had no idea how performing in someone's lounge was going to turn out. There's a lot of different lounges and a lot of
different people. But people are laughing a lot and we’re still alive.
TL: It’s so much fun. Way more fun than I thought it would be actually. I thought I was embarking upon a short lived social experiment that would eventually become an amusing anecdote but it’s actually fun. It’s much easier to make people laugh in their own homes than I expected and the people we have played to have been much nicer than I miserably imagined.

What was the inspiration for it?

CD: You'll have to ask Mr Lock, I just jumped on the bandwagon (in fairness there was plenty of room on it and he looked quite lonely...).
TL: Well last year I directed a couple of shows for the Edinburgh Festival and we ran out of preview dates so I held some in my living room in Brixton. Performers, audience and the cat enjoyed it so much that I thought I'd finally solved the conundrum of how to do my world tour.  You see, weirdly, I have fans all over the world - not a lot of them but they’re flung all over the place; one fan in Iran, two in Brazil, one in Costa Rica, a dozen or so in Australia, then quite a few in the US and Australia but not enough to make a conventional corporate theatre tour viable.  However I arrogantly thought that I might have a fighting chance of selling out people's living rooms.

Would it be fair to say that you're trying to inject some excitement and anarchy back into stand-up with this project? As a kind of resistance to the Live at the Apollo/stadium stuff that's happening now? Or do you just hate microphones?

CD: Comedy risks become very sanitized and comics very separate from the audience when it gets too involved with things like celebrity and other marketing overdeterminations. It certainly does feel very 'live' and 'front line' on this tour for both performers and audience.

TL: I would never perform on those Live at... type of shows (mainly because they wouldn't ask me). My comedy has often been described as ‘avant garde’ or ‘off-beat’ which is often just a frightened way of saying 'unpopular' but I've never regarded being unpopular as a bad thing. Being unfunny is a bad thing and that’s often just a matter of taste. You are only as funny as your audience. And if you have good taste in anything you know very often that it won't be shared with the majority. When I go to watch comedy I like to be surprised and feel excited, I like to have parts of my brain lit up that had been before and that's what I want to give my audiences.  Much of my act is spontaneous and off the cuff so, yes - overall it is probably the opposite of the Live At The Apollo/stadium stuff that's happening now. I like every show to be unique, I like the sense that it could only have happened here and now. Otherwise people may as well just sit at home and watch Live at the Apollo! That's the whole point of live comedy - that it is happening now, it's not someone repeating a script, there is the possibility of an immediacy and intimacy that you can't get with anything else.  

And as for microphones, you know... I do have a problem with them. I think there's always something out of kilter with any dynamic that has one person speaking to so many people that he or she needs to be amplified.  It's dangerous. It's just too close to Nuremberg for my liking.  There's no possibility of dialogue in that situation.  It's just, ‘shut up and listen/follow me’.  In a good Victorian theatre you can talk to 2,000 people without being mic’d up. And the audience can talk or shout back at you.  But in someone's living room there's a possibility of a much more unique interactive experience that really involves everyone present.

What's the response been to the idea and to the actual gigs themselves?

CD: Brilliant. We're both very good, you know?
TL: People do seem to love the idea. And those that have actually had us in their livings rooms seemed to have really loved it.  More people think it's a great idea than have actually booked us, though.  I think people find the idea of having a show in their living room a social anxiety-inducing proposition, a couple of times there has been the a sense of massive relief from the host that the evening was actually a laugh and that we were funny and that all their friends actually enjoyed themselves.

How would your dream living room gig go?

CD: The audience would be ceramic and I'd be wearing a space suit. Maybe with some girls pretending to fight.

And your nightmare one?

CD: The audience would be wearing space suits and I'd be ceramic. Maybe some poo would be involved. Not mine.

What's the strangest thing that's happened on the tour so far?

CD: Standing up in front of three middle-aged ladies in a 12x12 room and telling them about the ladyboy that accidentally sucked my cock in Thailand.
TL: Or turning up to a house with just three women waiting for us.  And another one with Kate Moss walking into the room and sitting down on the sofa whilst I was doing a particularly complicated and rude mime...

You're taking stand-up into new areas (literally - ho ho!). Where do you see it going in the near future? And where would you have it go if it were up to you?

CD: The term 'stand-up' includes so many different practices that just happen to be standing up and talking. I just like it to be human, compassionate, self aware and above all - funny.
TL: I don't think stand up needs to go in any particular direction but I see it becoming more diverse, with more original acts. This is the counter balance to the stadium filling, TV panel show comics - there'll be a new wave of indie comics that aren't so much concerned with fame or money who do it simply for the extraordinary experience of creating, communicating and surprising us with new ways of making us laugh.

To invite strangers into your home for a night you’ll never forget (in a good way, not a Straw Dogs kind of way - hopefully....click here