BARD of Barnsley Ian McMillan and Cartoonist of the Year Tony Husband team up for York Explore’s first foray into improvised comic poetry and art on Wednesday.

Quick-on-the-quip McMillan and quick-on-the-draw Husband will "embark on a fast-flowing, rapid-rafting adventure on a current of local stories and legends" in their Cartoon History Of Here show at 7pm.

Aided by audience input, they will paint a humorous picture of York in words and pictures freshly minted on the spot with no trace of real history knowingly included.

Fiona Williams, chief executive of York Explore, says: "Ian McMillan and Tony Husband are sweeping in a new line of wickedly funny and staggeringly clever art and poetry like we’ve never had before. It’s a coup for us to capture this pair for our first poetry/comedy evening at Explore, and we're making a fabulous event of it by opening up the ground floor with a bar and café too. I can’t think of a funnier way to launch our new programme of entertainment.”

McMillan and Husband have been doing such shows for ten years. "I was doing a show with the poet and painter Freda Hughes, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath's daughter, when Tony came up and said, Let's get together and do something' without knowing exactly what," recalls Ian.

"We thought, 'Let's try and do some greetings cards', which didn't quite sell; then we thought about doing a book, and then I had a gig at the National Centre for Early Music for lots of librarians, where I asked Tony to be involved.

"But he got the wrong end of the stick, thinking he had to create cartoons in advance. I said, 'No! You've got the wrong idea. You've got to do them on the spot. You can do it, dead easy, as you have to put forward five a day for The Times'.

"So I turned up with my flip chart, Tony turned up with his, for The Circle of State Librarians event, but Tony had misheard it as the 'circular state of librarians' so he did a cartoon of this 50-stone, massive librarian as the poster to preview the event."

A partnership was born and a decade later, Ian revels in Tony's company as much as ever.

"We just turn up and do the shows off the cuff, and Tony is so quick, he just can't stop drawing cartoons," says Ian.

"When we started taking the show round, it was remarkable to see him at work in the day because we'd be out somewhere and he'd get a call from The Times with the theme of the next day's cartoon. We would sit in a café and he'd fax off four or five cartoons to The Times, who'd say 'we like number three but can you make it funnier?'."

Come Wednesday,Tony will drive over the Pennines from his home near Stockport, while Ian will let the train take the strain, as is his custom. What lies in store for the York Explore audience once you arrive, Ian?

"This one is laughter all the way, because it's a cartoon history of York. People send me local history books, but I'm honour-bound to burn them, because if any real history creeps in, we throw it out straightaway," he says.

"There's a great chance for audience involvement, and you never know what might happen at each show, but the worst thing is when people don't suggest anything." York, you have been warned. Speak up and the wilder your suggestions, the better.

"At these shows, you have to work out who wants to play. That's why I greet everyone at the door, to work out who might play with us," says Ian. "Tony might create 20 cartoons, maybe more, at each show. He'll start developing the cartoons from what people say, while I develop improvised poems, and there's always a big queue afterwards for Tony's works. If he runs out, he'll do more at the end!"

Ian McMillan and Tony Husband present Cartoon History Of Here at York Explore, Museum Street, York, on Wednesday at 7pm. Tickets: £9.50 from feelinginspired.co.uk or in person in cash from any of York’s libraries, reading cafés or the mobile library. Alternatively, they can be reserved by calling 01904 552828 and leaving a message or by emailing york@exploreyork.org.uk