Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson - who shot to fame in the 1980s as double act Victor & Barry, and then went on to star in popular sitcom The High Life - have reunited for their first TV interview in 17 years.

Scotland Tonight: What Ever Happened to Victor & Barry? will air tonight (Thursday 7th September) on STV (and STV Player, for those outside Scotland) at 8:30pm.

Presenter Rona Dougall sits down with the duo at Glasgow's iconic Tron Theatre to discuss their comedy beginnings, how Victor & Barry inspired The High Life, and whether or not they'd ever bring the much-loved 'Kelvinside Men' back to the stage or screen.

Below are some extracts from the interview:

On the popularity of Victor & Barry with Scottish viewers...

Forbes: They took us to their hearts.

Alan: They did. It's so fascinating - of all the things I've done over the last 75,000 years - it's always Victor & Barry or The High Life that people connect with when I come back here, and actually all over the world. I think it's so interesting that something from so long ago - something that is so totally organic to who we are and where we came from - is what people love you most for. Something that really came from your heart.

On whether they would ever bring the characters of Victor & Barry back...

Forbes: I don't think so.

Alan: Forbes couldn't do his kiss curl anymore! I think we're still on the fence about it. Obviously people have been asking us for years, but now it seems more likely as we're bringing them back in some form. But actually, I think part of their 'thing' is their youth. It's the fact that they're pretending to be older people - that's part of the humour of it, these young people being all world-weary. Now it would be two world-weary old farts.

Forbes: Exactly, that's my concern. We'd have to be filled with Botox.

On the challenges involved in making BBC Two's The High Life...

Forbes: It was quite fraught. All of us in that show - Patrick [Ryecart], Siobhan [Redmond], Alan and I - were going through various traumas in our lives. We were all a bit mad and it was a bit pressurised.

Alan: The writing process was long. Victor and Barry was coming to an end and The High Life was starting underneath it. It's that funny thing where people hire you because you're weird and quirky, then as soon as they get you, they want to iron you out and make you generic and we railed against that. We had such a laugh when we were actually shooting it, but we were all a bit bonkers.

Forbes: The energy you have to expound to just be what you do...

Alan: We cared more about our brand then.

Expanding on the challenges...

Forbes: There was one scene where the passengers were going to be slightly older. There was going to be some turbulence and [their characters] Steve and Sebastian had to go down the aisle and ask people to remove their false teeth. They would put them in the fridge, then when the time came for them to distribute the false teeth back to the passengers, the teeth had frozen, so we had to put them in the microwave to thaw them out. Then they were hot, so we were handing them out going, 'Hot teeth, sir? Hot teeth, madam?'

So we wrote this, then we went in for a meeting about the script. The person who had been assigned to us as a script editor had, at one point earlier, given me a booklet entitled: 'How to write a sitcom'. This person then said, 'that wouldn't happen on a plane'. I was like, 'it's not a documentary!'

On bringing their working relationship to an end in the mid-nineties...

Forbes: There were lots of other things going on at the time. Life moves on and sometimes you have to let things go in order for other things to happen.

Alan: We'd spent a lot of time together and went through a lot together. When we killed Victor & Barry off, it was a very symbolic [moment]. It was at the London Palladium - Victor & Barry would have died to have died at the London Palladium, and so they did.

Forbes: And it's better to quit while you're ahead.

Alan: Yet now here we are...

Forbes: Here we are flogging it on again!

On the challenges in their own relationship at that time...

Alan: We never fell out. I think we just needed a break from each other.

Forbes: We just needed a bit of time.

Alan: We never had rows or things like that. It was more like slightly extricating yourself from a relationship so that you can have some time, you know?