STEVE Punt and Hugh Dennis host BBC Radio 4’s half-hour of satirical chatter The Now Show. Maybe their return to live comedy after a three-year gap should be called The Now And Then Show because now they’re still doing what they did back then in 2011 and 2007 and 2005 for that matter.

The material changes, of course it does, but the style of presentation remains the same, still being rooted in cosy, middle class, Middle England observation, as it was in their Footlights and The Mary Whitehouse Experience days.

The condensed, more incisive format of their weekly radio bulletin suits them best, keeping Punt’s verbosity in check. Live, he does the spadework once more, armed with his perennially present clipboard –by now his equivalent of a comfort blanket – as he matches his woolly, university lecturer appearance with woolly clouds of quizzical words.

As ever, these serve as set-ups for Dennis’s quips, playful physical comedy and trademark distractions from Punt ploughing on regardless.

Long ago, the act was described as Steve Punt and his naughty friend and that dynamic still applies in their early fifties, in the tradition of the puppet or the dummy holding the upper hand over the puppeteer or ventriloquist.

Punt chips in with the occasional barbed aside to stop him being merely the straight man, but the larking Dennis has the gags, whether the enduring duo are casting a cynical eye over our plethora of obscure TV channels in the digital age or speculating on the “moderate sex” warnings in film classification.

Maybe they will never develop a much needed nasty streak to go with Dennis’s cheek and Punt’s dry intelligence.