Back to Malvern with a diva in tow

The Fat Lady Sings is being staged by Kit and the Widow, a.k.a. Kit Hesketh-Harvey and Richard Sisson, with opera singer Melanie Marshall. The Hesketh-Harvey and Sisson double act has been entertaining audiences far and wide since the 70s.

"We love playing in Malvern, it's a fantastic venue," Mr Sisson said.

"When we were there before we had a great reception, and we thought we'd come back and do something a bit different, so we kidnapped a diva and we're feeding her up to make sure she's fat enough to live up to the title of the show.

"There will be some really amazing singing as well as the jokes, but you don't have to know the world of opera to be able to appreciate the show, as most people know a lot more opera than they think they do anyway.

"Also, people that aren't familiar with the likes of Mozart might have developed a bit of an affection for their work after we've finished!"

Mr Sisson described their usual act as resembling that of classic comedy crooners Flanders and Swann.

"What we usually do is topical satire, so at the moment we're concentrating on things like Jeffrey Archer's fall from grace," he said.

"We're at the Edinburgh Fringe at the moment, getting absolutely soaked. We always come here so we can go round and steal other people's jokes, so we're always that bit funnier when we leave than when we arrived," he chuckled.

Outside Kit and the Widow, the pair have both been successful in other artistic fields. Mr Sisson was responsible for the score of the new Alan Bennett hit in the West End, Lady in the Van, and Mr Hesketh-Harvey has written several screenplays, the most famous of which is Maurice, the Merchant Ivory film.

They met at Cambridge in 1975, where they were both in Footlights, which provided a platform for comics from Monty Python to Fry and Laurie.

"We used to do it for fun, and then people started to pay us, so we've been doing it ever since," he explained.