Byline: Daniel Rosenthal

Royston Vasey is coming to the West End. Daniel Rosenthal meets Jeremy Dyson, the Gentlemen's gentleman

During the League of Gentlemen's A Local Show for Local People, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith hurry on and off stage, donning and discarding the costumes and make-up which transform them into the residents of Royston Vasey, the Northern town familiar to several million television viewers: Mr Chinnery, the terminally incompetent vet, the toad-obsessed Denton family, Tubbs and Edward, married, murderous proprietors of "the local shop for local people". While the three stars sweat, the League's fourth member, Jeremy Dyson, will be noticeable by his absence. Though he writes much of the material, he doesn't perform; not because of "the unfortunate allergy to halogen lighting" cited by his biog in the Local Show programme, but, he says, because he's "not a good enough actor" to carry the group's character-based comedy.

So while the success of the League's two series on BBC2 has ensured that Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith increasingly find themselves buttonholed by fans, Dyson, 34, goes about his business in contented anonymity. "I don't lie awake at night worrying that I'm not getting recognised," he says. "For the others, it's still exciting and fresh, and what we always dreamt about when we started out."

The three performing Gentlemen got together while studying drama at Bretton Hall College, Wakefield. A mutual friend of Gatiss introduced them to Dyson, then a philosophy student at the University of Leeds, and they have worked together ever since. Their imminent arrival in Drury Lane is simultaneously a mark of the League's burgeoning popularity and a return to their roots, because the group's award-winning rise from the Edinburgh Fringe (Perrier Award, 1997) to Radio 4 (Sony Silver...