HOWZAT

After Peter Luff's favourite, Pants Dance, and after Dom has broken the actual world record for putting on the most pairs of said undergarments - 16 - in a minute, it is time for the grand slapstick finale. This week's is an elaborate Western tableau involving a dozen extras dressed as cowboys and showgirls hurling gallons of custard, or "creamy muck-muck". As the credits roll, Dick and Dom crawl out of a yellow puddle looking utterly spent. But this is only half-time. Once they and Da Bungalowheads have cleaned up and the heroic cleaners have shovelled custard from the carpet, all must gee themselves up again to record Sunday's two-hour show.

Half an hour later, showered but with their ears still encrusted with custard, Dick and Dom are like frazzled children after a particularly manic birthday party. They are small - Dom is 5ft 4in, Dick 5ft 8in - and, like many screen stars, their heads appear too large for their bodies. But they have an undeniable starry gloss. Dom with his bright eyes and pointy features, like a newly painted marionette, is the more driven and analytical, often answering for Dick, who is almost catatonic from exhaustion. Dick, or Rich as he is known off the set, has the more even good looks, but is less outgoing and, judging from the serious smoking and the fact that he likes to meditate to a relaxation CD, finds the stress more taxing. As we chat, they segue into each other's answers just as they do on TV.

"You couldn't do a live unscripted show unless there was a telepathy between you," says Dom. "We know what each other is going to say, we can judge each other's moods. I know what he's thinking right now." Dick turns to him with dark-ringed eyes: "What's that then?" "Cheese and pickle sandwich and a nice sleep," Dom replies. Dick nods wearily. Their friendship began when they met, both aged 19, as the youngest employees of CBBC. Each grew up - Dom in Exeter, Dick in Sheffield - with the very specific ambition of becoming a BBC children's presenter. Like Phillip Schofield and Anthea Turner before them, aged 11 they used family camcorders to make showreels of themselves presenting in their bedrooms, bombarding the BBC with CVs and letters. I ask Dom if he ever feared he might fail: "There was no question of that."

Although Dom (father a doctor) went to the private King's College, Taunton, and Dick (father a construction engineer) to Tapton Comprehensive, both had a tough time at school. Dom's three older brothers were in the A-stream, while he struggled in D-set. The cause, severe dyslexia, was not diagnosed until he was 15. Yet, like fellow dyslexic Jamie Oliver, Dom has phenomenal drive to prove he is no loser. After watching a teacher make a pencil disappear, he became obsessed with magic and, in 1995, won Young Magician of the Year. He has written six books on the subject - one of which got him kicked out of the Magic Circle - remarkable for someone who claims only to have read one book in his life, Paul Daniels' autobiography.

Dick, meanwhile, was dealing with rough South Yorkshire classmates and mocking teachers who laughed at his unlikely dream. Aged 12, he began presenting a show on Sheffield Children's Hospital radio, studied drama and performed in local pantos until, aged 18, along with Dom, he was finally beamed up by the BBC mothership. The pair found a flat, just off the thunderous Hangar Lane gyratory system, which they shared for five years. "It was one big party house," says Dick. "Carpets were wrecked, sofas had burst cushions from us jumping on them. It stank." It sounds rather a prototype Bungalow, and the pair agree that they are now making exactly the show they would have worshipped back then.

Since they have always seen their lives through a lens, it is little wonder they are so natural on screen. And this facility to play oneself - albeit a slightly intensified version - is hugely lucrative. But Dick and Dom are in no rush to follow Ant and Dec, with whom they are inevitably compared, from grungey Saturday morning to sharp-suited Saturday night. "We don't want to go in that direction," says Dom. "We want to stay a bit more left-field, a bit more like Vic and Bob or The Young Ones."

But the kings of early-morning rap and riff can irritate later in the day, as Johnny Vaughan has shown. And Dick and Dom are wary about Ask the Family being overhyped as the BBC's secret weapon against The Simpsons on Channel 4. "We're going to try new things out which may not work," Dom says cautiously. In any case, neither wants to stay in TV for ever. They are putting money away to get out as soon as they can. Both are building property portfolios. Richard plans to open a restaurant and Dom hopes to become a property magnate, although one can imagine him following Nineties kids' presenter Andi Peters into programme-making. They are wary, too, of the celebrity circus. "For some people in our situation, their main aim is to be as famous as possible," says Dick. "Our morals are different."

The pair claim to abhor media parties, and hang out at friends' houses where they are unlikely to be snapped staggering out, wasted - a huge bear-trap for children's presenters. "Rich is single [a long-term relationship ended last year], so he parties a bit more with his mates. But I'm very boring. I go home to my fiancée and cats and just have a bottle of wine," says Dom, whose girlfriend, Sandi, is a former singer with the band All Stars, but is now "preparing to make me a proud dad". Driven, resourceful, prudent and moral, with deep-rooted family values, Dick and Dom are almost shockingly conventional. Scrape off the creamy muck-muck and you might find that Tory MPs, along with disgusted British mothers, would adore them.

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