Steve Punt joins the cast of the surreal sci-fi classic in the role of the Narrator. 
A well-established presence on the UK comedy circuit, Punt is best known for his work as one half of long-running double-act Punt and Dennis. Independently, he also writes for, among other shows, CBBC's Horrible Histories. 

But despite a successful showbiz career with ample experience in musical comedy, The Rocky Horror Show tour marks Steve's first appearance in a live stage musical. 

What's On caught up with him to find out more.

You'll be opening the new Rocky Horror Show tour in Brighton, Steve, which is something of a natural home for the show. Are you feeling the pressure of audience expectation?
Lots of the actors have done it before, so you've got around you a kind of cushion of people who know the show backwards, and there'll be a weekend of previews to help those of us who’re new to it. But to be honest, having the chance to rehearse something properly for three weeks is a relative luxury for me! Comedians don't really rehearse much anyway, and a lot of what I do is topical, so it's only written a few days before. Also, with radio, you have a script in front of you, so you don't have to learn anything. I'm really enjoying the process of working it all through properly with the cast and getting everything fixed in my head.

Were you much of a Rocky Horror fan before you were offered the part?
I'd seen it a few times so I knew it fairly well. Some of the songs I've known since I was a teenager, and some bits stick in my memory more than others, so it's really interesting to see how it all fits together. It's such a well-worked show - it's been on for forty years, so every single second of it has been meticulously worked out.

What do you think it is about the show that's made it such an enduring success?
I think there's a whole mix of stuff that makes it slightly addictive. It's just so weird and so different from everything else that if you've ever seen it at all, you're not likely to forget it. There are lots of moments in the show that are very memorable visually and musically. I guess that's why it's become a show where the audience joins in a lot. Music I think is almost uniquely powerful in the way it wraps up memories for people, and it's probably been around long enough now that people who saw the original production will be bringing their families along. It's almost like the more familiar it becomes, the more people want to stay with it.
Now, with so many jukebox musicals around, it probably stands out in a slightly different way to how it originally did. In a sense this is quite an old-fashioned, proper stage musical, with songs that tell a story and belong at their own point in the action. It also has a bit more depth to it than you might expect. It's gained this reputation for just being a romp with lots of audience participation, but the last twenty minutes make you feel like you're seeing a proper piece of theatre.

As a comedian, I'm sure you've dealt with hecklers, but The Rocky Horror Show takes audience participation to a new level. Is that something you're looking forward to?
We were talking about this in rehearsal the other day. You can't really think of it as heckling, which is often malicious and designed to trip you up. In this case, it's more that the audience are part of the show - the obvious comparison is with pantomime. It is slightly daunting because even when you know something, if you get interrupted halfway through, it can throw you, so there is a feeling of trepidation among those joining for the first time. But it comes with the territory, and not only have I been fully warned about it, I've actually been given a script with all the usual heckles in it so I can get used to the timing and where you need to leave pauses.

The Narrator role is being shared between you and two other people (Charlie Condou and Philip Franks) on this tour - has there been any sense of competition between you?
We haven't seen each other rehearsing, and I get the feeling we're all trying to come at it from different angles. There are many ways you can play it, and I think that's precisely why they bring different people in. I suppose it's like any part that people already know - when you do Shakespeare, you can't think too much about everyone who's played the part before. It has to be between you and the text.

What's your costume like? Do you get a fancy smoking jacket?
I've got a marvellous smoking jacket that's actually being made from scratch! I'm not generally the sort of person who gets jackets made, so on the rare occasions when it happens it's quite exciting. You can feel the bespoke way that it fits, and in a largely ready-made world there's a very old-school thrill to being fitted.

Have you ever been tempted to try out the full Frank-N-Furter get up?
I'm sure anyone who's ever had anything to do with the show before would secretly like to try out the full Frank-N-Furter get up - particularly the cloak. It's amazing! It's very much of its time, from that mid-’70s era when pop acts like David Bowie and Peter Gabriel had all their elaborate stage costumes. The costumes do make this show feel like it's in its own world, which is a powerful thing in any production, but there's also a kind of period charm to it now.

You do a lot of behind-the-scenes writing and editing as well as performing. Do you have a preference for either?
There's an element of the grass always being greener, where part of you always wants to be doing whatever you're not doing at that moment. When I'm writing something, I always think it would be nice to be performing it, and then when I'm performing, I feel like I'd rather be tucked away in a nice café somewhere with a coffee and a laptop. The truth is I enjoy both, but they give you very different things. Writing is about being able to polish something to perfection, and it's a very quiet, concentrated pursuit, whereas during a performance you're completely in the moment and if anything goes wrong there's nothing you can do about it, so there's an adrenaline rush you don't really get from writing.

More recently you've been involved in creating work for kids, like Horrible Histories. Is it different writing for children?
Partly it depends on the age, but certainly I think once they're about eight or so, you should never talk down to children. They sense it immediately. As a kid, I always liked stuff that was slightly too old for me - there was something aspirational about wanting to watch or read something more grown-up. In the very first meeting for Horrible Histories, we were told not to consciously write it for children, but to just treat it like a sketch show about history, and I think that's key to its success. All of the writers and the producer came from comedy rather than children's backgrounds, and it's gone on to win comedy awards. It's immensely enjoyable to work on. Of course, that involved big, silly costumes too. 

You see - cloaks are always funny!

The Rocky Horror Show plays Malvern Theatre, Worcestershire, Monday 9 to Saturday 14 May and Regent Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, Monday 23 to Saturday 28 May.