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Heroes - Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish
Proving that you don't have to be a fledgling comedian to get the opportunity to be involved in a Comedy Lab were Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish.
The two rose to prominence with The Adam and Joe Show in 1996 - a fantastical post-pub programme centring around such features as Toymovies, BaaadDad, Vinyl Justice, songs, Star Wars TV, Ken Korda, and pranks, which ran until 2001 – but it wasn't until 2002 that they were involved with a Comedy Lab.
It was Adam Buxton who first tested the Comedy Lab waters with The Last Chancers. Adam played Johnny, a wannabe rock star with big ideas.
A singer of a B-list Brighton band, driven by the monotony of his routine office job, he desperately wanted to be famous. Johnny's girlfriend and friends are less than encouraging and he's in danger of being overshadowed by flatmate, Brit-Lit writer and latest 'big thing' James Finn, who has it all.
Last Chancers was then made into a mini-series, which was broadcast in 2004.
Joe Cornish got involved in the Modern Toss Comedy Lab in 2005. Modern Toss, the hit cult comic featuring inappropriate sign writer Mr Tourette, came to life in this foul-mouthed hybrid of live-action and animation.
Creators John Link and Mick Bunnage brought their maladjusted cartoon characters to life, while the surreal live-action sequences were directed by Joe Cornish
Featuring more pointlessly hostile behaviour than you could poke an animated stick at, Modern Toss is a brilliantly surreal world of weirdness. It's had continued success on Channel 4 with a second series broadcast in 2008.
Adam and Joe can currently be heard together on their award-winning BBC 6 Music programme on Saturday morning.
They've also both forged a successful career path away from each other too. Adam's recently directed a music video for happy-go-lucky pop-stars Radiohead and has also been working on a MeeBOX pilot for BBC 3, while Joe's been in cahoots with Edgar Wright (Shaun of the De3ad, Hot Fuzz director) in writing a film script for Marvel.
