Thinking on their feet is what comedy presenters Ashley J and Tee-J do best and now audiences at Harrow Arts Centre can test them on the pace and inventiveness of their spontaneous material, first-hand. Their show, ACTing Up! is a live improvised comedy game show, where the audience take the judges’ seat and call out topics for two teams of performers to act out. Headed up by half of the duo each, the two teams battle it out, creating comical versions of songs, adverts and well known films.

So exactly how long do they have to act on the audience’s suggestions?

“A minute and 30 seconds,” breathes Ashley J as he runs me through the order of the night at break-neck speed. “We present together and then split into teams and go head to head. One of our strands is ghetto Disney where we take a famous movie and set it in the ghetto, so there is a bit of planning that goes into it beforehand, but there’s no point with the rest of the games.

“Most of the time it’s seriously improvised; we work so much together we know each other’s strengths and can read each other straight away. If we’re on stage and one of us breaks into a dance or song, we just go with it. We don’t know where it’s going to go, we’re on edge and the audience can see us struggling when we’re trying to pull it back together and that can make it even funnier.

“The best way to be prepared is to be unprepared.”

Ashley J and Tee-J have been working together for ten years, so it’s no wonder they gel so well. They starting off at Theatre Royal Stratford East Youth Theatre and from there went on to perform at a number of London venues. Both have appeared in TV shows such as EastEnders, The Bill and Kerching. Ashley J tells me he’s just finished performing in Twelfth Night at Nottingham Playhouse. The talented pair also ran their own comedy/music show on Break FM and are co-creators and stars of ACTing Up!

Joining Ashley J and Tee-J on stage are Deja Vous FM DJ, Joe Grime and north London comic Jason York who has been in the show since 2008. Jason is also working on his own comedy show.

“Jason does these crazy impressions of artists and so does Tee-J, so they end up fighting over who is going to impersonate who. Tee-J is well-known for making up artists you never even know. He might say it’s someone well-known like Whitney Houston or Michael Jackson but you think, hang on that sounds nothing like them.”

They will next be fine tuning their next show, U Can't Sketch.

“We don’t want to do stereotypical comedy, we think outside the box and follow situations to the extreme. We pull on ideas that inspire us; some of our characters are written straight from things we’ve seen on the street.

“You just need to walk on a crazy street in a crazy area and you’ll see people really are crazy like that.”

ACTing Up! is at Harrow Arts Centre, Hatch End on Friday, December 3 at 8pm. Details: 020 8416 8989