Cosmic private eye Dick Spacey, obsessive plumber Ron, mystic Madame Psoriasis, psychotic Victorian heroine Jane Hair. All are characters conjured up by writer and performer Steve Attridge for a new comedy show, Chaos, Carnage and Kulture. Let’s start with Madame Psoriasis — there’s a mysterious name.

“It’s a mysterious name in that she is actually a complete fraud,” explains Helen Mosby, who will be playing the female roles in the show. “What she really wants to do is to play on people’s insecurities: their hopes and fears. And she intends to make money out of it. She’s a performer, and of course she covers herself by making sure that nothing she says can be challenged.”

I am meeting Steve and Helen at the Jericho Cafe in Walton Street, and I ask Steve how he finds the characters who populate his shows.

“I’ve got a lot of suitable individuals in my family, so I have a retinue of ready-made people,” he replies, deadpan.

“I also find material at work, and in cafes like this one. I think it’s also a mix of Dario Fo and The Goons: the comic characters I grew up liking. I also treasure Mr Pastry and Ken Dodd, and my grandfather was a great music hall aficionado so I love the big-gesture characters like Marie Lloyd and Florrie Forde.”

Steve and Helen work at Ruskin College, but both have much professional showbiz experience.

“I’ve always performed ever since I was a kid, and I did various bits of singing on TV,” Helen explains. “But I left all the serious stuff behind — I’ve been writing comedy for years and years, and performing it.” Steve started fairly gently, and went on to gigs that really sorted the comedy men from the boys.

“One of my first gigs was as a folk singer in a pub when the Wednesday Knitting Circle had their weekly meeting, so my deeply felt warblings were accompanied by the percussive clack of several dozen needles.

“I also worked as a performance poet, which I think is where a lot of my characters come from — working men’s clubs, places where you have to fight against the audience rather than entertain them. Then I did a lot of writing for television. So this show is bringing me back into theatre, which is where my heart has always been anyway.

“I met Helen a couple of years ago, and I thought it would be much more fun to evolve a show between us. It’s been a great pleasure to write this gallery of mad character types.”