Video by Maxwell Taylor, shot at Brightons Komedia

If blood, guts, horror, sexual innuendo, and cross-dressing make you laff, then you'll be the perfect audience for Brighton's outrageous comedy duo Owens and O'Malley. Spawned at Brighton Polytechnic's Visual and Performing Arts course nearly six years ago, Rachel Owens and Ally O'Malley decided to forgo a lifetime of filling out Art Council's grant forms and plumped for commercial comedy instead.

Both originally hail from the Midlands, and they sparked after Ally's catalogue-of-disaster trips home made Rachel laugh and began working on a play together but quickly realized that their talent was better served in a sketch style show. A training stint, with renowned clowns Gerry Flanagan and Jos Houben, resulted in a series of risky and risque sketches first performed at a Brighton "Bodily Functions" platform, and at The Brighton Festival.

Now they are a regular act at The Semi Skimmed Comedy Dairy and are gigging in Hastings, Crawley, Hove and London. A typical performance, consists of mad props and costumes, a penchant for fake blood, a lot of slapstick and a cruel line in hot irons slapped across your face. 'We've been doing The Semi Skimmed Comedy Dairy for nearly a year' says Ally. 'I still get nerves everytime we perform but it feels more jobby now. I'm more confident in our material and I don't mind if people don't get it. It's more like come and join our gang. People have to find our sense of humour.'

Ally believes the initiation into their brand of humour requires regular attendance at their gigs. 'If we do a one-off gig, we get laughs, but when we look out at the audience, people look quite aghast. 'I think it works better when we appear somewhere on a monthly basis. People get into where we are coming from and are almost willing you, they're waiting for it. It's like a language.'

The duo create their work by recording themselves on video and watching the results, tweaking their ideas as they go along. 'First it's an idea. I'll say for example, I really wanna do something about cowboys,' says Rachel. 'We don't talk about it too much, just set the camera up, improvise and fire it off. 'Sometimes you can get a sketch straight off, then you tighten up the words, work out the visual side and think what you'd like to see on stage. Then you have to work out how you can extend the gag further - and bobs your uncle!'

When they began, Rachel and Ally wondered whether people would find them as funny as men, but they've found this hasn't been a big issue. 'I've always thought that people didn't find women funny,' said Ally, 'but the reaction we've had is that if we are funny it doesn't really matter. Anyway we play a lot of male characters and switch roles a lot.'

The duo recently appeared in Hot Lazarus at The Sussex Arts Club, taking on ready-scripted roles written by other Brighton comedians, but found the 'Footlights' University style put them in the classic straight female role. 'It was classic sketches and the female roles were straight,' says Ally. 'The boys got all the daft roles, the pull your pants down stuff,' adds Rachel. 'Our comedy is much more visual and throwaway, more silly, not trying to be particularly clever. We take people into our own world. It's very imaginative but we don't really take ourselves too seriously.'

Imogen Jones

All photos © James Lewes