Ian Hislop and Nick Newman talk about their stage adaptation of A Bunch of Amateurs, which opens at The Watermill on Thursday

The play’s writers, journalist, quiz show panellist and editor of Private Eye magazine, Ian Hislop and writer and satirical cartoonist Nick Newman, describe their long-standing writing relationship and how they’ve transformed a show from the screen to the stage.

How long have you been writing together?

Ian: Nick and I have written together for over 30 years. We began at school in the 1970s collaborating on revues, carried on at Oxford where I took over a humorous magazine Nick was editing, and have continued ever since.

Nick: A writing partnership is much like a marriage - except in a marriage you see rather less of your spouse. Ian's other half Victoria refers to me as 'the wife'. He never buys me presents or sends me flowers, though. And to be fair, I never cook him dinner and completely forgot our Pearl Anniversary. Apart from that, we're very happy, thank you very much.

Ian: The bottom line is that working together is a laugh. We have a rule that we don't embark on any project unless we think it’ll be fun. And it usually is. Our professional collaboration truly began in the early 1980s with the satirical puppet show Spitting Image. We started writing sketches together - and amazingly they were deemed broadcastable. Five years later we were Spitting Image’s chief writers, commissioned to write 25 minutes of material a week.

Nick: But by then we were utterly burned out and running on empty. Ian was editing Private Eye, and beginning his career as a TV presenter and panel-show contestant. I had packed in my job as a business journalist and was about to begin a career as pocket cartoonist at The Sunday Times.

There was no obvious reason why either of us should carry on working together – except that we enjoyed it. So carry on we did and collaborated on programmes such as, Murder Most Horrid, Harry Enfield and Chums, My Dad’s the Prime Minister and most recently the BAFTA nominated BBC2 drama The Wipers Times.

How did you get involved in writing the screenplay for A Bunch Of Amateurs?

Ian: In the midst of what’s best described as our scriptorial roller-coaster ride, we were approached by the Oscar-winning producer David Parfitt to have a look at a film script he had in development called A Bunch of Amateurs. The script was based on an original story by Jonathan Gershfield and John Ross and was an inspired fish-out-of-water idea set against the backdrop of an amateur dramatic production of King Lear.

Nick: Three years and many, many re-writes later we were on the red carpet in Leicester Square, enjoying the unexpected honour of being presented to the Queen. The film, which starred Burt Reynolds, Samantha Bond, Sir Derek Jacobi and Imelda Staunton, was 2008’s Royal Film Performance. Her Majesty apparently enjoyed it so much that she requested a screening at Sandringham that Christmas.

Why did you decide to premiere the play at The Watermill Theatre?

Nick: Much of the action of A Bunch of Amateurs is set in a converted barn, so when The Watermill Theatre expressed an interest in the project, we were excited by the prospect of seeing the story enacted in a real barn. The interior of The Watermill with all its original wood is about as barn-like as a theatre gets.

How did you go about adapting the film for the stage?

Ian: Well it was a case of tearing up the screenplay to produce a new script to reflect the story’s theatricality: more Shakespeare, more am-drams, and more jokes about Hollywood stardom - now that we’d actually worked with a 'movie legend' in the tautly-honed flesh. It was a truly bizarre experience which we've tried to capture in the play. A strange case of art imitating life imitating art.

Nick: As the piece is about the redemptive power of theatre, it’s perhaps more powerful and appropriate as a play than as a film. Even as a very low-budget movie, it had a cast of more than seven, and an extravagant range of locations – including Hollywood.

Adapting the screenplay for the stage entailed some radical re-imagining. Out went the special effects, the bigger cast – and Hollywood.  In came a tailored script and a tighter focus on the characters and the plot.

Ian: As our hero, the fading Hollywood legend Jefferson Steel would say, misquoting King Lear, ‘The play’s the thing’.

See A Bunch of Amateurs from Thursday until Saturday, June 28 at The Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, Newbury.

Tickets: £26 to £14.50 

Box office: 01635 46044, www.watermill.org.uk