Friday morning and it’s all hugs and air-kissing in an old chair factory in Castleford. A redbrick town where all the locals look like they’re ill, wind whipping in off the motorways as we gather for the first day of rehearsals for ‘Big Society!’

Well actually it’s not a rehearsal at all, but a recording weekend; the wheels of the music industry turn so slowly that we have to record the show’s soundtrack album before we’ve actually begun to rehearse the play. So in order to have a CD of the songs available for sale at the show, the whole cast has to speedily adopt and adapt their character, find their voice, have a tantrum, deep breaths, calm down, darling darling you’ll be fine, and record their songs for our winter Music Hall show while the rest of the world (and the show’s audience) are worrying that some towns and shops are already putting up their Christmas lights. It’s ridiculous, I agree.

I’ll start from the beginning. The show that’s now called ‘Big Society!’ began life a year ago as half an idea that myself and Red Ladder director Rod Dixon were getting all excited about – a show set in Edwardian music hall times that could comment on how little has changed in the intervening century. A musical about a public school government that props up a monarchy, an aristocracy and an evil level of inequality and poverty. Only with jokes, and choruses.

Little did we know that, as the musical was being written, the summer would erupt in a belligerent bout of city-centre rioting and the establishment would be ridiculed as part and parcel of a phone-hacking scandal. Why bother with fiction when the facts are so absurdly, pitifully comical?

Chris (Red Ladder’s genius backroom organiser) and Rod (genius Director) somehow blagged a meeting with the people at the gorgeous and newly re-vamped City Varieties in Leeds and convinced them that, as a surreal and twisted mirror of their hallowed ‘Good Old Days’ (for it’s at City Varieties that ‘Good Old Days’ was broadcast for umpteen years), they ought to put on our irreverent, dirty, poke-em-in-the-eyes version of Music Hall sleaze as a two-week run in January 2012. Bizarrely, they said yes. All we had to do now was find a way of filling the theatre.

Enter Phill Jupitus, high on a list of possible candidates, who I’d seen a few years ago fronting the reformed Bonzo Dog Band in Manchester and doing the business – an old-school socialist stand-up with a belting singing voice and a desire to put an artistic rocket up the Tories’ collective arse. That Man from the Telly, come on down! (To West Yorkshire).

So here we are at the old chair factory-cum-recording studio, larking about and adopting various regional accents as we begin to sing our way through the 11 or 12 songs that make up the musical part of the show. Rod and me recently went on a fact-finding mission to the opening night of the new City Varieties (and believe me it’s a wonderfully sumptuous, velveteen revamp of the original Victorian hall) to see old trouper Ken Dodd. Bloody hell. Despite being about 134 years old, he rattled out a non-stop barrage of jokes and quips for a full 3 hours. Proper stuff. It reminded us that we’ve been learning a lesson with these Red Ladder/Chumbawamba shows we’ve been touring over the past three years – make it entertaining, make it relevant, make it memorable and make it a Good Night Out. Yes, you probably wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t already assume (correctly) that the premise of the show is ‘Let’s gather together and bash some politicians’. But that bashing has to have good tunes, good jokes, plenty of communication and (importantly) the unexpected. Stuff you might not have counted on.

So that’s the background. Roll up, roll up, come and see the show, etc. I love this theatre stuff. I’m relatively new to it, so it still surprises me – there’s a level of desire and commitment (along with the fun and piss-taking) that I love. I love the level of self-discipline in theatre that I’m not used to seeing in bands, in rock ‘n’ roll. A circle of adults in a rehearsal room at 10 am, breathing exercises and stretches, vocal warm-ups and a collective vision – making something that happens in front of an audience, making sure it works and that it works well, every night.

I won’t go into the different people (and their characters) right now. I’ll leave that for later. Suffice to say we’re in sickly-looking Castleford with our newly-invented version of Chumbawamba (this time we’re a circus band: drums, euphonium, accordion, piano and ukulele-banjo) and a bunch of fascinating actors and musicians. Day one, and no falling out yet. I’ll keep you posted.