A lot of comics polarise opinion but not Laurel & Hardy, everybody loves them, from young ones who have seen them on YouTube to old ones who remember them from back in the day.

Those fans are therefore in for a treat on Monday when Chalkfoot Theatre Arts' Laurel & Hardy production comes to Fairfield Halls.

The play sees the funny men stuck in a waiting room in the afterlife assessing their time on this earth, chorincling everything from their school days right up to their deaths.

"It's a kind of humour that you just don't really get any more," says Simon Lloyd, who stars as Oliver Hardy alongside Neil Bromley as Stan Laurel.

"It's gentle humour whereas everyone now is trying to push the boundaries of comedy and I don't know if it will ever be done like this again.

"They made the transition from silence to talking effortlessly where a lot of the contemporaries struggled.

"Neil is a full on fan of them - I love them but he really knows his stuff.

"His dad is a massive fan and he took him up to the Laurel & Hardy museum up in Ulverston where Stan was born and he was performing Stan impressions from an early age.

"I grew up with them on television and found them a fascinating double act, I had a real affinity with them.

"I find now that I'm constantly reading material about them, right now I have a book called Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy by John McCabe."

The play has been updated from the original written by Tom McGrath more than three decades ago and spent three weeks in the West End last summer after a successful tour of smaller venues in South East England.

"It takes place in purgatory between heaven and Earth and they have to revaluate their lives to move on," explains Simon.

"It is interspersed with seven or eight scenes from their film which we act out.

"We have a lot of die hard fans that come and watch it and to see the reaction we get from them when we get into one of those scenes is great."

Laurel & Hardy, Fairfield Halls, Park Lane, October 4, 7.30pm, £17. Call 020 8688 9291 or visit fairfield.co.uk.