It’s been a long wait, but Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller (pictured) are finally hitting the road again with a new live show. And they are bubbling with excitement about it. The Armstrong And Miller Show Live, which comes to Bradford next month, features the double act’s best-loved characters and some new faces.

This year the comics won a Bafta for their BBC1 show, hailed by critics as the best sketch comedy series since The Fast Show. After spending so long filming for TV, the pair are looking forward to touring.

“We’ve built up such a great rapport with our fans, and we’re so keen to perform live for them again,” says Ben.

Alexander adds: “Doing a live show is such a joy. You know the pleasure you get from introducing people to one of your favourite films? You want to enjoy them enjoying it. We have the same sensation performing live – we can’t wait to introduce audiences to the next sketch.”

Ben says audiences let them know what’s funny: “As Lenny Bruce so rightly said, ‘the audience is a genius’. I remember a show we did several years ago where we relaxed the ‘fourth wall’ and started letting the audience drive things. You listen to the audience, have fun with them and let yourself be guided by them.”

The pair, who met as students at Cambridge University in the early 1990s, are accomplished improvisers who revel in the interplay with live audiences. “On TV, each character has to be ruthlessly, faultlessly played. But live, you can let the audience in a bit and go off the script. You can play everything with a twinkle,” says Ben.

The live show features the duo’s best-loved characters, including the Second World War pilots who talk street; Brabbins and Fyffe, filthy alter egos of Flanders and Swann; and Tony and Dimitri, the hapless football manager and his Russian oligarch boss, as well as new favourites such as the out-of-place vampires and the inappropriately dowdy women working in a sexy lingerie shop.

Some characters have been revamped for the theatre. “Jilted Jim (the bitter groom ditched by his wife on their wedding day), comes out on stage on his own and starts talking to the audience,” says Ben.

“He gets a couple up on stage and does a version of Mr And Mrs with them; he puts the wife in the silent booth and tells her husband, ‘Go through her Facebook account and find out all the blokes she’s talked to. Get shot of her now. You can’t trust women. They’re all out to get you!’” The show features theatrical effects in a custom-built set, recreating “the atmosphere of a Victorian toy theatre”.

“We loved Little Britain Live,” says Ben. “Like that show, we want to use the latest technology to fantastic effect on stage.”

The Armstrong And Miller Show has a wide spectrum of fans. “We love the fact that fans say, ‘my teenage son and my 80-year-old grandmother adore your show’,” says Ben. “The BBC did research, and it emerged that lots of families watch our show together. That’s such glorious territory. That’s the reason I got into comedy; those things that both you and your parents can enjoy are great because they bring you all together.” The pair have worked together for almost 20 years. “The longer you endure as a double act, the stronger you become,” says Alexander. “It may be a cliche, but a double act is like a marriage. “There’s an implicit mutual admiration because no relationship gets put under greater strain than a double act. You have to trust one another’s judgement absolutely. We each have to be able to say to the other, ‘I think I prefer that’ – and the other has to be able to find that not annoying!”

He adds: “In a normal friendship, if someone says something funny, the conventional response is laughter. But in a double-act friendship, your commercially obliged response is, ‘Will that work on BBC1?’ You’re forever applying heightened and totally unfriendly levels of scrutiny to each other’s humour.”

But, they both emphasise, their friendship always comes before their comedy. “I sometimes find myself unable to put things into words,” Alexander sighs. “Ibsen talked about, ‘the man who comes up against the bony limits of his forehead’. I feel like that sometimes! But Ben can always find the right words. If I had 12 hats, I’d take them all off to Ben!” * The Armstrong And Miller Show Live is at St George’s Hall on Saturday, September 25. For tickets, ring (01274) 432000.