Around about the time Ben Elton was becoming exceedingly irritating with his soft left rants about the "terrrible Tories", there emerged a nutter from near Newcastle called Jim Moir who would take over a back room in a grotty south London pub and put on a two-and-a-half hour show that had neither style nor content but was strangely fascinating.
He'd do things like put a Bryan Ferry photo on his face and tap-dance with a plank of wood attached to his feet. But it was his sweet shop owner character which signalled that Vic Reeves (his stage name) was destined for either a life of supervised medical attention or prime time celebrity status. For what it's worth, the line that got him out of comedy prison that night was the sweet shop owner's assertion that he refused to stock Curly-Wurlies because they were "too elaborate". A real case of having to be there.
As fevered word-of-mouth spread about Vic's show, a disaffected young solicitor called Bob Mortimer turned up one night and, deciding that he had common cause with Vic, promptly chucked in his job and joined him on stage. Another audience member, Michael Grade, then head of Channel 4, didn't quite understand what was going down but was sufficiently impressed to offer Vic and Bob their own show, called A Big Night Out.
Hailed as the most innovative and daring comic performers for a generation, they were anything but. Reeves and Mortimer can be traced back along a lineage that includes the more imaginative music hall performers, healthy doses of the Goons, bits and pieces of the Beyond The Fringe team (which featured Peter Cook and Dudley Moore) and large aspects of Monty Python, not to mention Spike Milligan especially in his "Q" series.
What Reeves and Mortimer had to distinguish themselves from their forebears was a total avoidance of the usual comedy parameters (thanks to directors and produces letting them just get on with it) and a contemporary type of clued-in surrealism that at its best was reminiscent of Jacques Tati and at its worst pandered to a student union type of humour.
Having sharply divided the critics over whether they were "funny" or not, they soon moved on to prime time BBC territory with The Smell Of Reeves And Mortimer and their current take on the quiz show format, Shooting Stars.
Are you, in fact, "funny" Vic? "It depends on how you define it," he says, "and I know for a fact that there are a certain amount of people who despise what we do. It's a judgment we leave up to other people but I really don't go along with the whole "surreal" thing because I think there's more to the humour than that - there are different forms of comedy in there, I think. It sounds stupid but we just do what we find funny, and that's always been our guiding principle . . . I never wanted to be a comedian you know, I just did it that night in the pub to see what would happen."
Influences? "Well I did watch Monty Python but I don't think what we do is anything like them. I'd be more influenced by John Sparks, Phil Cornwell, Dad's Army, Morecambe and Wise, Jacques Tati and Mike Leigh (the film maker)."
Saying that he's not really bothered that some people can't see any humour at all in his work, he is genuinely surprised by how Shooting Stars has brought in a less youthful, less culty audience than his previous work. A thoroughly modern reworking of the traditional quiz show, the show features Vic and Bob as the question masters alongside regular team captains Ulrika Jonsson and Mark Lamarr, with the addition of George Dawes (Matt Lucas) who is dressed as a baby and plays the drums.
Apart from giving Vic the best ratings he's ever had, a live version of the show travels around Britain, and the show has spawned a book, a CD, a board game and a software package. Saying the highlight of the last series was getting Gordon Burns (from The Kryp- ton Factor) to knock over cans of dog food while playing a trombone, his favourite bit this year is when he gets to hunt through Leo Sayer's curly hairdo to discover what lurks underneath. Still as subtle and thought-provoking as ever? "Yeh, you could say that."
Shooting Stars is on BBC 2 on Friday nights at 9.30 p.m.