After three albums as Cassetteboy, Mike Bollen and Steve Warlin were about to give up making mash-ups.

Faced with the real world of work after seeing that cassette tape remixing was done, the pair taught themselves how to edit video.

As practice, they cut up episodes of The Apprentice and pieced them back together. They uploaded it to YouTube.

The hilarious result made people finally take notice.

“It’s certainly the most popular thing we’ve ever done,” says Bollen.

“It had had something like five million hits by the time we had to take it down.”

Alan Sugar had no problem with it.

He said he loved it on the Jonathan Ross Show. The problem was a new digital management company took on The Apprentice and the clip disappeared.

Since The Apprentice, Bollen and Warlin have reprogrammed MasterChef, The One Show, Jamie Oliver, Dragons’ Den, Barack Obama, James Bond and The Only Way Is Essex.

“You want to pick someone recognisable. There isn’t much point doing something people don’t hear often. The most important thing is to pick a show with lots of different types of words. That is why The Apprentice is good. They have different tasks every week. One week they’re slicing sausages and the next week they’ll be doing an exercise video.”

It’s an arduous task putting the clips together. The pair watched 46 episodes of The Apprentice for a six-minute mash-up. Sounds soul destroying.

“It was. We’ve never done anything quite that ambitious since.”

On average they watch ten hours of a chosen programme. The more they watch, the better. A recent David Attenborough mash-up made out of the Blue Planet used eight hours’ worth of material.

“We’re building a palate of words to play with and you can never have too many words.”

A common request by fans is for The X Factor. “They don’t use enough interesting words,” explains Bollen, deadpan.

And he’s deadly serious indeed. He agrees University Challenge would be ideal.

“Paxman would say enough different things But the news is our favourite material. It has a bit of weight to it. Every news story is different and involves different things happening.”

Bollen and Warlin lived in Brighton for nearly a decade after returning to the UK from a long stay in Australia.

They released their first mash-up as Cassetteboy on Brighton’s Spymania imprint, once home to Squarepusher.

For Brighton Fringe they are bringing a new live show, Cassetteboy vs DJ Rubbish, to the city.

“People dance and laugh at the same time, and there are not many nights you can go to where you can do that.”

Expect cheesy disco mixed with people off the television.

“People don’t know what to expect because how do you translate a threeminute YouTube video into a two-hour night out? We will be playing the kind of music you would hear at a wedding disco, obvious cheesy party hits, with Alan Sugar and MasterChef and David Attenborough chucked in over the top.”

Cassetteboy Vs DJ Rubbish is at The Spiegeltent, in Steine Gardens, Brighton, May 24, starts 11.30pm, £10. Call 01273 917272