Two men in pyjamas walk into a bar. No, this is not the start of a hilarious joke but rather, the daily lives of Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez.

The US double act have been donning night attire since their 2004 debut at the Edinburgh Festival. Since then they’ve toured the world with their bizarre, often complex and ultimately brilliant physical character comedy shows.

Such is the speed at which the pair leap from situation to situation that even fans have been pondering what to do with the energetic duo. For example, new show In The Middle Of No One is the story of an explorer leaving his wife, but somehow the duo shoehorn time travel, an unhelpful robot and giant sea monsters into the equation.

“I couldn’t give you any spoilers. There is a story to it, but that’s not the point. We try to incorporate a narrative because we feel like it gives the audience some pay off… but really it’s all a big excuse for us to try to find ways to be funny,” admits Allen.

“That’s really what we’re going for – to do comedy in every way we can find. Sometimes it gets very blue, other times it’s a little more theatrical. We start with several little storylines – at the top you might not know what’s going on as it’s a little disorientating and we’re snapping around between all these worlds we create and characters we play.

“As it continues you start to realise things are related and different things you’ve been watching weave together into a narrative.”

Part sketch comedy, part stand-up, part character comedy, the pair refuse definition.

“We draw on all of those different things but our roots are in improvisation. We would get a simple suggestion and improvise a 45-minute play. Then we kinda ditched the whole idea of narrative completely. We wanted to be surprising and normally, by the time we’d finished, we weren’t even the same characters any more!” Allen explains.

“I thought you could have the same pay-off a plot has on a rhythmic level – like in music when there is crescendo, you leave a satisfied audience member at the end. Then, as we’ve gotten older, we realised that storytelling can be interesting. We found a lot of joy in finding different ways to write our stories.”

Although the awards and nominations are rolling in now – including a slew of Best Newcomer and Best Character Act nods, plus the 2009 Barry Award for Most Outstanding Show – it wasn’t always the case. Growing up in New Mexico, Allen and Chavez met at a High School improvisation team and had mixed success.

“We did a show at the officer’s wives’ club at an air force base. I remember playing a game called ‘The Worse Person To Be Stuck In An Elevator With’ and this kid got on stage and shouted ‘Vietnam man… Vietnaaaaaam!’ like he was having this flashback,” he laughs.

“I don’t think that was a good idea… they were really stoney-faced. That was the only show we did.”

While stories of their madcap antics may bring up comparisons with fellow surreal duo The Mighty Boosh – skits include such diverse material as the nail-biting conclusion to a chess game between a man and a bat, and two cowboys trying to out-man each other while arguing whether or not aliens exist – Pajama Men are unique in that they come as they are. They use no props or set and boast a character list that would make Messrs Moon and Noir weep.

“Our characters spring from everyday situations – we like to pick up on people’s idiosyncrasies. If we find something annoying about the way someone does something – and we’re not mean spirited – we’ll grab on to that and do it for a couple of weeks,” Allen says.

“We do things to annoy each other too – sometimes funny stuff and new characters will come out of that.”

Bearing all this in mind, it’s time to confront the elephant in the room… why pyjamas?

“When we first started I’d just graduated from this very artsy, hippy physical theatre programme, and I was really concerned about ‘gesture’ and the ‘line of the body’. I said to Mark, ‘We need to wear Spandex.’ He was like, ‘We are NOT wearing Spandex.’ He was right,” laughs Allen.

“I don’t remember when it happened, but we decided on pajamas. We wanted something neutral so we could jump between characters and not have it be a big deal. The whole idea was to ‘forget what we’re wearing, this is a world where anything can happen’, but really, it’s just us standing in a bar in our f****** pajamas. Please be nice to us.”

Support from Piff the Magic Dragon.

* Pajama Men are at Komedia, in Gardner Street, Brighton, on December 1, 8pm, £16.50. Visit www.Komedia.co.uk/brighton or call 0845 2938480 to book.