Early Doors Live: Craig Cash and Phil Mealey interview

The hit stage show based on popular pub-based TV sitcom Early Doors (shown on the BBC in the 2000s) has returned for another run in Manchester. We chat to creators and stars Craig Cash and Phil Mealey to find out more.

Early Doors Live is back at The Lowry - last year's run became the fastest-selling show ever at the venue. When you started working on the live version, did you have an inkling it'd go down as well as it has?

We didn't have a clue, but it came as a lovely surprise. We only booked the small 500 seat theatre at The Lowry but by the time we'd finished the tour we'd been playing to six thousand people at Manchester Arena! We were surprised and delighted at how popular the show became.

Many of our readers will have seen the TV sitcom. The stage show features many of the same characters, but a new plot?

Yes, the stage show has its own plot which isn't reliant on having seen the series or already knowing the characters as it all becomes self-evident.

Are any of the characters based on people you know? We're hoping the lazy dodgy coppers aren't taken from real life inspiration!

Actually, the coppers are the only ones based on real characters! We can't reveal the names to protect the guilty, but in the pub where we used to drink they would come in on duty and sit in the back and have a pint with the landlord. Only coming out with overcoats on if they wanted to watch the football as they didn't want people to know they were in uniform and still on duty!

In real life, pubs like The Grapes are closing down with alarming regularity. Would you agree pubs are a really important part of our culture?

Yes, it's a great place for people of the local community to meet, and one of the only places where people of different ages and backgrounds etc can meet, bond and share different opinions and beliefs (and get shit-faced...)

If you had to be locked in a pub overnight with just one of the other characters - but not Phil or Duffy, who would you pick?

Freddie, because after talking to him for ten minutes you'd be fast asleep.

Are you looking forward to performing in front of live audiences again this summer?

It is great to be asked back at The Lowry and gives us a last chance to get one more round in before we finish it for the last time.

Now the stage show has proved how much people love the show, do you think there's any hope of it coming back to TV?

Well, if someone were to offer a commission on it they probably would have done that already.

At its heart Early Doors is warm, deliberately funny and a celebration of ordinary people within a community. It's not cynical, aspirational, slapstick or middle class. And neither will it give the person who recommissioned it a big feather in their cap as it's not something they've personally unearthed. The politics of commissioning is a strange beast to us but luckily for us fans of the show absolutely love it and that is the most important thing to us.