Dustin Demri-Burns and Seb Cardinal star in the new series Live At The Moth Club, a hybrid of live comedy performances and behind-the-scenes mockumentary shot in the East London venue where they have often performed as their double act Cardinal Burns. Here they talk about the show, which is coming to Dave later this month…

Dustin Demri-Burns

How would you describe Live at the Moth Club?

In essence, it sets out to capture what a night at a real alternative comedy club night is like at a working man’s club in the middle of Hackney, while weaving in narratives of what’s happening backstage.

The show is anarchic and experimental, more in line with Vic and Bob’s old nights, making this the naughty older brother to the more sanitised version of live comedy in huge venues which we see so often on TV. This is more of an immersive experience, like Punchdrunk Theatre performing comedy.

How did the idea for the show first arise?

[Director and executive producer] Rupert Majendie’s Knock2Bag nights at the Moth Club have been running for years and have always been a testbed for up and coming comedians; he’s always been brilliant at championing new comedy and has a great radar for what works.

With our own night he’d say, ‘I’ve booked some new guy’ and five years later they’re winning the Edinburgh Comedy Award, like Sam Campbell.

Rupert’s been talking about this concept for a long time. He’s achieved this sense of stepping into the club and being a fly-on-the-wall by marrying the live performances with a mockumentary angle, which is clever because it adds a sitcom layer on top. To capture the energy of a live comedy night is really hard but Ed Tucker, the brilliant director of photography, has an amazing CV of comedy languages and styles, so he was the right person to marry the two.

The way the action cuts to the audience and scripted characters in the crowd is an ambitious and intelligent way to place the viewers in the trenches with the audience. Dave has given Rupert a great space which does justice to the live format he’d created

What are the show’s inspirations?

I don’t think I’ve seen a real comedy night captured on screen - there was Phoenix Nights, and there are elements of that, and there are shades of Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out.

When we had our Cardinal Burns residency at the Moth Club we would be really loose and so many of the acts would use the night to try out material. What’s so good about Rupert is that he encourages risk-taking over playing it safe. He’s just a comedy fan.

How exciting was it to be able to include Cardinal Burns sketches?

It was a nice chance for me and Seb to dip back into sketch work again. We’ve never completely stopped, but family and filming other work means you’re not regularly creating together.

We started writing and this gave us a platform to make more Inzane [a spoof action thriller] and perform solo spots as live characters in the Moth Club. It’s been great to do it again. I hadn't done a live sketch for about three years, and I absolutely loved performing again. It was incredible. The atmosphere was amazing, but that’s the Moth - it’s home to incomparable live nights which you won’t find anywhere else.

Seb Cardinal

How would you describe Live at the Moth Club?

We started playing the Moth Club with Rupert back in the day and our residency always had quite a spontaneous feel - the live nights had an unplanned flow to them and that comes across in Live at the Moth Club.

We always found it interesting how what was happening behind the scenes was sometimes as funny as what was happening on stage, and this brings those two worlds together.

How did you find returning to the Moth Club and playing a version of yourself?

We’ve stopped performing live, so the first time we returned to live performance was actually being filmed, which we found quite odd.

To film this series has been so nice, because it feels as if we’ve captured that whole period when we were producing those live nights at the club with Rupert.

This does all feel a bit like a time machine; watching it is bizarre, because it’s almost like watching your life replaying on screen.

Did it feel like you were making a TV show?

What was brilliant is that performing on stage didn’t feel any different to a live night. The placement of the cameras was all quite subtle, as was the lighting, so it was like a live night at the Moth.

Rupert wanted to create that sensation, so the place wasn’t overly lit, filming wasn’t overly staged, and, if things went wrong, that would be captured.

That’s what makes the show exciting, because when you go to a comedy night part of the thrill is that some of the night might not work. The show has the feeling that if something doesn’t work, it’s all going to go in.

This is what sets it apart from other shows which have a slickness to them; what I love about the Moth, in regard to the venue and how the show is filmed, is that it has a rough and ready quality, which is what you find at smaller comedy venues. Rupert was trying to bottle that characteristic.

There’s a real mix of established talent and rising talent - has that always been a part of Moth’s ethos?

That was always the way with our night, where you’d have a mixture of people who are established, like Harry Hill, and then people who are up and coming.

That mix makes the night so fun, because you have a bill of acts who you just find funny and it makes the night more likely to surprise, too. You might discover someone you'd never seen on TV before.

To have that platform is really exciting, because I don't think there's anything out there at the moment where you have that mix. This show is a great way to discover new performers who are experimental and see an alternative to mainstream comedy.

Are some of the characters influenced by people you’ve met over the years?

Mark Heap’s character, George, is someone you would meet at the Moth - a funny guy who’s set in his ways.

Alex [Owen] and Ben [Ashenden] wrote the backstage scenes and have brilliantly reproduced the backstage vibe.

Why is the Moth Club so special?

We all found the club is a place where two worlds met; on a Thursday night there’d be the old world of a bingo night and the next it would be full of comedians, many of them up and coming. How those two worlds collided was always entertaining.

This is a place which harks back to an old London, which you don’t see too much anymore, and it has a lot of character; one night there’s bingo, a few nights later Lady Gaga would perform there. It’s a very unpretentious place.

•  Live At The Moth Club starts on Dave at 10pm on November 24

» Interview with the show’s director and executive producer Rupert Majendie