Hale & Pace @ Newcastle Panthers

Gareth Hale met Norman Pace at a teacher-training college in south London, discovered they had much common – particularly a sharedwicked sense of humour – and the rest, as they is, is hysterical.

Best known for their tongue-in-cheek spoof The Two Rons - also known as The Management - a pair of unsmiling East End of London ‘heavies’, their other well-loved personas are the children’s TV presenters Billy and Johnny, deadbeat cabbies Jed and Dave, money-conscious evangelists Nathan and Jeremiah, the brainless Curly and Nige and the Road Rage Milko.

Their TV sketches have often caused uproar. Thousands of animal lovers in the U.K. were up in arms when they pretended to microwave a cat.

The Microwaved Moggie sequence won them the biggest comedy award – the Golden Rose at the Montreux TV Festival – but cat lovers were steaming.

A lot of people thought it was a real cat,’ says Gareth, ‘It was a dummy!

No way you can get a real cat into a microwave. You can’t do it – we tried.’

‘On the other hand you can get a real Newfoundland dog into a microwave,’ says Norman. “But only after its been in the blender,’ Gareth points out.

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