The League of Gentlemen - Characters

Characters

The League of Gentlemen have played in total nearly a hundred characters, many created in the early stage shows, others during the span of the television series and some specially for the team's film.

Nearly all of the characters live in Royston Vasey. Tubbs and Edward Tattsyrup run the local shop, despite the fact it is far away from the actual centre of the town. However, they believe themselves to be local and will protect their localness by any means. Deeper inside Royston Vasey, there is Pauline Campbell-Jones, a Restart officer at the local Job Centre who hates the "Dole Scum" she has to work with. Then there is Barbara Dixon, a transsexual taxi driver who goes into great detail about her process of sexual conversion. Alongside them is Mr Matthew Chinnery, a veterinarian who suffers from a curse which results in any animal he comes into contact with dying a violent death; the Rev. Bernice Woodall, the local priest who does not believe in God and spends her time berating her parishioners; and Hilary Briss, "The Demon Butcher of Royston Vasey" known for serving his "Special stuff" to a select few customers.

Elsewhere, there is Charlie and Stella Hull, whose marriage is falling apart. There is also Judee Levinson and her cleaning lady Iris Krell, who are in a constant mind-battle. Levinson has a grand lifestyle, while Iris has a grand sex life. Then there is Geoff Tipps, who works in the local plastics company. Geoff likes comedy, but is hopeless at joke-telling. His relationship with his workmates Mike Harris and Brian Morgan is shaky, with Brian having a relationship with Geoff's wife, and Geoff often threatening people with a gun under pressure.

Royston Vasey has its share of visitors. Benjamin Denton comes to the town on a hiking trip, but his friend is killed by Tubbs and Edward. He is forced to stay with his toad-loving Uncle Harvey and Auntie Val, whose house is managed in an insanely ordered manner, with them being paranoid about germs and masturbation. There is also "Legz Akimbo" theatre company, who perform plays for the area, and whose manager Ollie Plimsolls is often shown to be unsuitable for acting. From abroad, there is Herr Lipp, a homosexual German exchange teacher who has a disturbing and monstrous side. The most evil of all the visitors is Papa Lazarou, a circus ringmaster with a blackface, who calls everybody "Dave" and steals wives.

It is widely believed that a lot of the characters and indeed the town are based on Pemberton's home town of Chorley, with Royston Vasey based on Adlington, a village within Chorley Borough. The character of Herr Lipp is believed to be based on a hospital chaplain Steve Pemberton encountered after suffering a heart attack in Germany and Pauline is primarily based on a restart officer of Reece Shearsmith's. Similarly, Ollie Plimsolls is based on a community theatre actor that Shearsmith had worked with. In the DVD commentary on the second series, Pemberton and Shearsmith state that Papa Lazarou's speech patterns are based on their former landlord, who would phone their flat and insist on speaking only to Steve. Gatiss has said in interview that the local shop was inspired by a shop in the village of Rottingdean and that he was influenced growing up around the former Winterton Hospital asylum near Sedgefield.

The majority of the inhabitants of the village — male and female — are played by Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, and Mark Gatiss, and the script was written by these three, along with Jeremy Dyson. Dyson, not an actor like the others, appears only in cameo roles. As there are usually only three actors on screen at any one time, the different characters mostly play out their own stories in several serialised sketches, rarely crossing into each others' storylines. Only rarely do actors "meet themselves". Exceptions include Papa Lazarou facing the Reverend Bernice in the Christmas Special (both Reece Shearsmith), Les McQueen buying a magazine from Pop's son (both Mark Gatiss), and Alvin Steele buying food from Iris at a supermarket checkout in Series 2 (again, both Mark Gatiss). The idea is taken further in The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, when the characters meet the actors (especially when Herr Lipp meets his creator, Steve Pemberton). In the live shows, when Pam Doove was auditioning for a part in the Christmas Nativity Play, directed by Ollie Plimsolls, Pam had to audition in front of Ollie's Legz Akimbo colleague Dave (Pemberton), who said that Ollie couldn't make it "for obvious reasons" (Shearsmith plays both Pam and Ollie in the television series).