What gave you the impetus to carry on when the show initially got dropped? 

C: It was her, actually.

D: We made this horrendous pilot and ITV came back asking, “What happened?” They did a reshoot, which was like trying to polish a turd then said, “No, not interested, sorry”. I said to Charlie, “This can’t be the end! I can’t think of another idea.” I wrote an email to Shane [Allen, BBC controller of comedy commissioning] and said, “Look, I can’t let this idea go. I don’t know who else to go to, I will stand outside your office dressed as the Karate Kid until you talk to me.”  I went to a charity shop and found a judo kit and said, “That’s the sign that I will f**king do that.” I had it all planned out. And then Shane said, “Why would you do that? That’s very odd. Just come in for a meeting.” So we went in to see him. He’s like God to us. He saved us.

You don’t often see brothers and sisters working together – can you understand people’s interest in the dynamic? 

D: I don’t know whether it’s because I’m a girl; you have loads of brothers who write together, like the Farrelly brothers [who wrote There’s Something About Mary plus many other comedies]. 

C: We’ve always been close. When people say things like, “Oh I couldn’t work with my sibling because we don’t talk to each other, we hate each other,” I find that so strange.

Are there things that only you two find funny? 

D: Murder documentaries. 

C: What we’ve been doing for the last few years is seeing the humour in stuff that’s not meant to be funny. What inspired This Country were real documentaries rather than actual comedies. Real life is so funny. You don’t really have to make it up; it’s all there.

Did you grow up watching lots of comedy?

C: We’ve always been massively passionate about comedy. We’d watch stuff together and find the same things funny. Even stuff that wasn’t meant to be funny.

D: From the age of 10 we would watch Brass Eye. 

C: We used to watch The Royle Family with Mum and Dad. Seeing them laugh was so special because we found individually at school that making people laugh was such a powerful thing.

What type of modern culture do you love now? 

C: Anything paranormal. I’d love to go to a spiritual medium night and do a ghost walk. I should start my own ghost walk; that would be brilliant.

D: What I always wanted to do was dress up like a Victorian and hang out on an old country road at 4am, so if anybody drove past they’d go “F**k! I’ve just seen a ghost!” – that’s sad, isn’t it?

What’s your writing process like?

C: For the second series, we  had an office in Cirencester,  with some traffic wardens down the corridor. 

D: It’s full of taxidermy because we’re massive taxidermy fans. We’ve got a cardboard tube in there so we play baseball with that for about two hours. We’ll talk about something we’ve seen that’s funny, like Charlie will say, “I saw two people having this argument on a Facebook buying and selling page”, and we’ll see where can we take that. Our storylines are good when they’re really trivial.

Who has the final say? 

C: We agree on most of it.  [To Daisy] You get your way more than I do. If I wanted something  to go in and she didn’t then it probably wouldn’t. 

D: We’re actually really pernickety. Every single line has to be right even if there’s an extra syllable that doesn’t make it sound as funny. 

C: We can either be perfectionists or complete lazy assholes. It depends on the day and what else we’ve got planned.

This Country: meet the hilarious siblings new to your TV screen