Ricky Gervais once submitted a sketch for Smack The Pony – but it was rejected for being too sexist.

Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips made the revelation at a reunion show at the Edinburgh Fringe this afternoon.

They said the scene that the pre-fame Gervais wrote revolved around a male security guard feeling up women he suspected of shoplifting. But the trio deemed it ‘not funny’ – as well as making women the butt of the joke.

Separately, Mackichan said that when developing Smack The Pony in the 1990s they wanted to make sure their groundbreaking all-female comedy show was not defined by ‘women’s issues’ but by their desire to ‘do more clowning’ on screen.

Phillips added: ‘Male writers felt uncomfortable taking the mick out of women.

‘We worked hard on it because we thought "If this is shit, no woman will ever be allowed on TV [doing comedy] again".’

They shunned catchphrases and recurring characters to make themselves different from The Fast Show, the biggest comedy at the time, and avoided punchlines, preferring to let the camera pan away. ‘No ejaculations, just eternal coming,’ Mackichan joked.

The trio were interviewed by former Newsnight anchor Kirsty Wark, and told how they had remained in close touch since the show ended in 2003 after three series and two specials.

Since then, they have tried to get other projects off the ground, including a sitcom about three sisters who got divorced at the same time. But this never made it to air after the Channel 4 executive championing it moved to the BBC.

In its time, Smack The Pony won two Emmy Awards, and the trio told how at the second ceremony Sacha Baron Cohen ‘got up and walked out in disgust’ at not being honoured for Ali G.

The trio also recalled their early years at the Fringe, with Phillips telling how she first came up with a university drama group performing the German play Woyzeck. They stayed in cramped accommodation, with three students each sharing a double bed. The group also included future Cabinet ministers Yvette Cooper and James Purnell, who had to wear a unitard for the show.

Smack The Pony review 

The series is rarely repeated, too, so these were not the laughs of nostalgia for scenes fans know backwards. The comedy still works on its own merits.

After a quick visual gag, the trio – in coordinated jumpsuits – launched into a typically absurd scenario, in which Mackichan was unable to persuade people to take her desserts because she couldn’t make the right face. Rather than a cheeky, seductive tone like that Phillips adapted, she could only screech the line intimidatingly, and hilariously.

Similarly, the increasingly contorted vocal gymnastics of competitive women singing along to Harry Nilsson’s Without You drew laughs for the clownish exaggeration.  

Then the piece de resistance, a series of video dating profiles, each a mini character portrait exquisitely rendered in just a few words. They can make ‘I’m lactose intolerant and really shouldn’t have left Berkshire’ say so much.

Tellingly, the women were laughing generously at each other’s performances, suggesting a real kinship and emphasising the feeling that this is just three pals hanging out, making each other chuckle. 

Sadly we got less than 15 minutes of this before the Q&A led by Kirsty Wark, although again the intimate friendship between the trio shone through on the sofa.

And at the end, a sneak peek at a new idea, a glitzy song-and-dance based on the ‘glamorous granny’ competitions holiday camps ran in their heyday. It was very rough around the edges, but the prospect of new material from this trio is exciting indeed. Might it be too much to hope that the love they’re receiving in this brief, sold-out Gilded Balloon run might herald a full comeback? Fingers crossed…

- by Steve Bennett