HARRY Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, after 30 years working together, have finally decided to come out and play.

The comedy pair, two of the funniest men ever to make sketch television – they once attracted audiences of 13m - haven’t toured a stage show in the past because they wanted to protect the ‘purity’ of their act.

Now, it seems the pair are quite happy to sully their reputations and check their professional dignity into the left luggage room at whichever station they arrive at on their UK tour.

And you can imagine the issue of purity won’t be uppermost in their minds as they wheel barrow the ticket cash to the nearest bank.

“Comedians are like pop bands,” offers Harry, on the subject of ethics.

“When you’re young, you have ruddy principles and don’t do old stuff because you don’t want to take away the purity of youth.

“But then as you get older, you look at The Rolling Stones and see what fun they have. (And how much money they’re coining?)

“We just want to have fun now.”

Paul agrees, grinning; “I bumped into Alexei Sayle the other day and he said, ‘I see you’re touring. Diluting the legacy, eh?’

“A funny thing happens to acts who hang around for long enough. They go through periods of uncoolness – Led Zeppelin were desperately uncool at one point – and then people think, ‘Well done for hanging in there and not dying!’

“That’s what’s happened to us. We’ve done our prog-rock and solo albums, and now we’ve come back together for a tour.”

Harry and Paul are undeniably excited about the prospect of touring for the first time, although Harry admits; “We’re nervous about ‘drying’ (forgetting their lines). But if we do that, of course it’ll be funny.”

Of course it will. Enfield and Whitehouse have comedy bones. Harry Enfield is Stanley Baxter reincarnated (if Stanley were deceased) with a London accent.

Over the years they’ve redefined sketch comedy and created a range of characters who’re now trapped in the amber of our imagination.

Both are huge individual talents, but when they come together the magic is heightened.

Paul Whitehouse and Harry Enfield in fact lived on the same housing estate. Paul was a drop-out who had left the University of East Anglia to pursue a career as a punk rocker but was also working as a plasterer in tandem with his future Fast Show partner Charlie Higson, a painter and decorator.

Among their clients were Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, who suggested Whitehouse turn his hand to comedy writing.

Harry Enfield, three years younger, was a public schoolboy and occasional milkman who was already working on Spitting Image.

When Harry met Paul he suggested Whitehouse try writing material for him.

The result was the birth of characters such as Stavros, the Greek kebab-shop owner, ("Hello peeps!") and Loadsamoney.

Harry adds; “Then we started on Saturday Live and Paul came in with Charlie and immediately the scripts I was doing were transformed. “And when we started doing the show we wrote these things together. We auditioned loads of actors for the Old Gits and things. And Paul was far and away better.”

“I wasn’t going to do stand-up or my one-man show,” Paul admits.

“It probably was down to Harry that I did anything like that.”

The theatre show will of course be a comedy trip down memory lane, reprising the pair’s widely loved characters as Loadsamoney, Stavros, The Old Gits, Smashie and Nicey, Kevin the Teenager, The Self-Righteous Brothers and The Surgeons.

"It's the right time to do it - before we die!," laughs Paul, who has co-starred with Harry in the likes of Harry and Paul, Harry Enfield's Television Programme and Harry Enfield and Chums.

Harry adds weight to the mortality argument; "We acknowledge in the show that we're not in the first flush of youth. We're both so old that we're starting to get ailments.

“So if we don't do this tour now, we never will. Every year, more of our fans are dying."

"A lot of them can't remember who we are," Paul adds. "But to be fair, we can't remember who we are, either!”

Death and memory loss won’t feature in the show, as it happens.

What they will talk about however is the absurdity of the likes of Harry, at 54, dressing up as Kevin The Teenager.

And it will be fun, because even if they are doing it for the money, they clearly still like each other. Which is evidenced in their chat.

“Harry is much more conscientious than I am, and he’s better at writing than I am,” says Paul.

“I tend to annoyingly muck about.”

“And then he comes along and sprinkles his little bit of genius on it, and then you like it,” says Harry.

“You’re very kind, Harry.”

“Thirty years I’ve had to put up with this.

“Thirty years I’ve had to put up with this miserable sod!”

Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse Legends! UK Tour, the Clyde Auditorium, November 3.