My first thought on seeing the promo material for new comedy The Last Laugh: what the Dickens are Trigger and Tim doing at Richmond Theatre?

For staring out from the page are the unmistakable faces of Roger Lloyd Pack and Martin Freeman - best known for their respective, and career-defining, roles in Only Fools And Horses and The Office.

Posters boys for the old and new schools of British comedy, the pair star opposite each other in this two-hander about a stuffy government censor and the young comedy writer seeking his approval.

"It is really a deconstruction of comedy," Lloyd Pack says of the piece, adapted by Richard Harris from an original Japanese play by Koki Mitani.

"It asks questions like: What is comedy? What makes people laugh?

"It looks at the technical side. But it is also very funny itself. I first read the script in August and it made me laugh out loud, which doesn't always happen"

Come to think about it then, the casting is rather inspired. And, while 27 years divide the pair, they have worked together before, playing detectives on the granny-grabbing TV drama Margery and Gladys.

Lloyd Pack was more than happy to collaborate again.

"If you didn't get on with your fellow actors, it would be hell," says the 63-year-old. "But I knew it would be okay with Martin. We have been in comedy for quite a time, so we got straight to work on the script.

"It could be quite a sedentary piece as my character spends a lot of the play sitting in his chair.

"I didn't want him to be a cardboard character but a lot of the comedy comes from the contrast between his office pose and how he is with his wife on the phone. His back story gives the play an extra dimension."

The action of the play, such as it is, takes place in a non-specific Cold War country of the 50s and 60s, when government censorship was still rife.

Thank goodness, says Lloyd Pack, that the most we get here is the occasional squabble over what is allowed before the nine o'clock watershed.

But what of The Vicar of Dibley, in which Lloyd Pack has played sheep-shagging Owen Newitt for more than a decade.

When the sitcom first aired in 1994, Dawn French's portrayal of a bawdy female vicar caused outrage in conservative circles.

"Yes, we have moved on a lot since then, haven't we," muses Lloyd Pack. "Though I do find myself rather shocked by some of the coarse language that makes it on to screen.

"I have always desplored comedy that relies on nod-nod jokes and innuendo for laughs but I don't go along with the attitude that it is not like it used to be."

Lloyd Pack is rather bemused that people view him as an authority on the matter.

"I went to RADA and dreamed of playing the great Shakespearean parts," he says. "But sitcoms are very potent and, after playing those roles, people thought of me as a comedy actor, whereas I see myself as an actor who can do comedy. I still have this longing to play Lear. I did it when I was a younger but it is a fantastic, impossible play and I would love to give it another go!"