Stand up and deliver some laughs

WAITING FOR Stephen Frost to pick up the phone, I wonder whether there's any point with my list of questions. This is someone who, after all, has spent the past 18 years making everything up on the spot. Of all people, he's capable of saying anything. Perhaps it would be better to take a leaf out of his book and wing it too. 'I just can't help myself,' he concedes. 'Even if I've just popped out to buy bread, they throw me out of the shop. I can't help gagging.'

An audience favourite, Frost is one of the kings of British improvisational comedy. With an impressive CV that includes hit shows such as The Young Ones and Blackadder, these days he performs in Britain and overseas with London's premier ad-libbers, The Comedy Store Players, whose stage show spawned the global hit TV series Whose Line Is It Anyway? Frost and the rest of the team (a stellar cast of Andy Smart, Steve Steen, Jim Sweeney and Richard Vranch who all have major credits to their names) will be in Hong Kong next weekend as the Punchline Comedy Club blasts out of the traps after a two-month hiatus. The first two nights have already sold out.

Punchline promoter John Moorhead - a self-proclaimed 'expat brat' who attended South Island School before moving to London - was determined to get everyone smiling again. 'I wanted to get back to Hong Kong as soon as possible, so I sent a questionnaire to everyone on the club's database,' he says. 'I asked people if they would come to a show in June, even if the Sars situation hadn't improved - 99 per cent said yes. People were peeved that I'd cancelled previous shows.'

There were no doubts that Hong Kong needed comedy more than ever - the trick was how to get the comedy to Hong Kong. The promise of first-class travel courtesy of Virgin Atlantic and accommodation at the Island Shangri-La hotel meant that, despite the World Health Organisation's travel advisory being in place at the time, the cast was keen to make the trip. Bearing that in mind, it's also clear from talking to Frost that for him, luxury was not a major motive. 'There's no such thing as a first-class flight when you're six foot six [1.97 metres],' he sighs.

The Comedy Store Players gave its first performance in October 1985. Back then, the idea of an unscripted comedy show was unheard of, and promoters' scepticism was such that only the second half of the show could be improvised. Organisers thought the paying audience might feel cheated by a bunch of performers turning up prepared to be unprepared. The four-person team then included a little-known Canadian comic called Mike Myers. Almost 20 years later and that basic format has transformed the stand-up circuit, with the team (whose line-up has changed over the years) playing to packed houses. 'I guess we're like The Rolling Stones of comedy,' says Vranch, who may be remembered as the often picked-on pianist in Whose Line Is It Anyway? 'Although we don't take as many drugs as the Stones,' pipes Frost. Myers, meanwhile, hasn't done too badly either.

The format was successfully applied to TV n the 1990s and sold to networks worldwide. Yet Vranch,who also has a PhD in radiation physics from Britain's Cambridge University, maintains there's no substitute for working a live room. 'Like the best things in life, like sport, sex - whatever - it's best to be there. You lose a lot with TV. On stage, anything goes.'