I do always worry that somehow the voices will blend when you go to transcribe.

Short: They won’t. One won’t even come out.

Martin: Well, let’s put it this way, you’ll be able to tell which mine is because I speak grammatically.

Short: But, for some odd reason, you’ll find yourself dozing off for no reason and you’ll realise the connection.

Do you use one another as a test audience?

Martin: Well, I think each other is our first test audience. And then I tend to just try out material on my wife and on my dog and on the band. And finally on the audience, who, of course, has the ultimate say. When I first started out people would say, ‘You have a great sense of humour.’ And I would say, really, the audience has the great sense of humour.

When did you figure it was OK to roast each other like this?

Martin: Day one.

Short: It’s very natural for people in comedy to do it. I think it’s very natural for friends, close friends to do it. And we probably started doing it playing Scrabble in the trailer while making Three Amigos.

Martin: The first day we met, Marty zinged me. He came to my house to pick up the script to Three Amigos and he saw all of the paintings and he said, ‘How did you get this rich? I’ve seen the work.’

Short: And I was looking for the script for Three Amigos and Steve handed it to me and said, ‘Can you give this to Martin Short, please?’

You said the previous tour was not a nostalgia tour. Is that still true and why was that important to specify?

Short: Well, because it wasn’t a nostalgia tour. A nostalgia tour would be if I came out as Ed Grimley and we did the Wheel of Fortune sketch and hope that that would get some nostalgia applause. If a singer comes out and sings all old hits, then that is a nostalgia tour and there’s nothing wrong with that and that’s great and that’s what I’d rather see.

Martin: I think a nostalgia tour implies that you’ll come out and say, ‘You know, ladies and gentlemen, when I first started, I did a little movie called The Jerk. And then you stand there and wait for applause.

Is there anything else you want people to know about the show?

Martin: Our goal, and sometimes we achieve it, I think, maybe I’m a little arrogant, but we want it to be one of the best shows the audience ever saw. We want to give the audience their money’s worth and really make them laugh and make them really have a good time and leave that theatre feeling better than they did when they came in.