the stage to talk about his day at work. He soon became a regular fixture in the show and began to write material with Moir. Through word of mouth, the audience quickly grew to a large number of devotees, including Jools Holland, Jonathan Ross, Charlie Higson, and Paul Whitehouse. After the crowd expansion led to a change of venue to the Albany Empire theatre in 1988, backstage man Fred Aylward joined as the regular character Les. Higson and Whitehouse also had bit parts. The show sparked the interest of Alan Yentob of the BBC, and Michael Grade of Channel 4, and eventually a deal was struck with Channel 4 to put the live show on television. With the help of Jonathan Ross' production company Channel X, a pilot was produced in 1989 (available to watch on YouTube) where the three-hour show was cut down to 25 minutes. The first series began in 1990, and the show ran for two series and one New Year's Eve special, totalling 15 episodes followed by a televised broadcast of their stage show 'Big Night Out Tour'. Recurring characters The series spawned numerous characters. Les Played by Fred Aylward, Les was Vic's bald-headed, dribbling, mute, lab coat-wearing assistant. During each show, Vic would reveal a new fact about Les - most notably, that he cannot help but raise a smile whenever he sees a spirit level and that he has a terrible fear of chives (later revealed not to be a fear of the chives themselves but the soil in which they grow). It would later be revealed that he has an internal wife called Pat, can self-reproduce throughout the summer months, collects stickers from car parks, was formerly the lead singer in the pop group Japan, has a pet jellyfish called Peter and plays the Bontempi organ. Les also had a fixation with mangoes and was later accompanied by a sycophantic little robot called Dylan. He is introduced as Les Dixon in one episode. The Man With The Stick The Man With The Stick is a man (played by Bob Mortimer, except in a few scenes where he appears alongside one of Mortimer's other characters) dressed in a large paper helmet which covers his face. He also wields a long stick, the end of which holds an object obscured by a bag. At the point when the Man With The Stick appears, Vic shouts,