IF anyone was going to write a play about the Private Eye of the trenches then it had to be Ian Hislop and Nick Newman.

And while their time editing and writing for the popular satirical magazine may not have achieved much, in their own humble opinion, creating a stage play based on The Wipers Times has.

Nick says: "I would say one of our proudest achievements has come out of this story.

"Part of what we wanted to do was get recognition for the two men, Jack Pearson and Fred Roberts, who made The Wipers Times happen."

"After the war they were completely forgotten," Ian adds. "By profession Jack Pearson was a civil engineer and so he went back to work on the railways while Fred Roberts it appears was a bit of adventurer at heart and went back to the diamond minds in Kimberley, South Africa.

"They didn't even get an obit in the papers when they died, which is a terrible state of affairs considering what they achieved."

But that all changed when the editor of The Times discovered their story thanks to Ian and Nick.

"Yes that was a rather happy ending to our story," Nick says. "Thirty years of writing satire and changing very little of the political landscape but following the film we did for BBC 2, the editor called us up and said it was about time to set the record straight. Two weeks later there was a full page obit to both Roberts and Pearson."

The Wipers Times is a stage adaptation of the award-winning BBC film by Ian and Nick, which tells the extraordinary story of the satirical newspaper created in the mud and mayhem of the Somme, interspersed with comic sketches and spoofs from the vivid imagination of those on the front line.

In a bombed out building during the First World War in the Belgian town of Ypres (mispronounced Wipers by British soldiers), two officers discover a printing press and create a newspaper for the troops. Far from being a sombre journal about life in the trenches they produced a resolutely cheerful, subversive and very funny newspaper designed to lift the spirits of the men on the frontline.

Defying enemy bombardment, gas attacks and the disapproval of many of the top Brass, The Wipers Times rolled off the press for two years and was an extraordinary tribute to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity.

Since its premiere at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury last month, the show has been, according to both Nick and Ian 'selling like hot cakes'.

"The Watermill have been really great to us," Nick says. "We premiered our last play there, A Bunch of Amateurs and the artistic director said if there was anything else we wanted to do there we just had to ask."

"For us this story was unfinished business," Ian tells me. "We pitched the idea of The Wipers Times to a film company ten years ago and were told no one is interested in the First World War. Then along came a little thing called War Horse and well they're jolly interested in it now.

"It's an unbelievably funny story, especially when consider how the printing was done, on an old press letter by letter. I absolutely love that old technology and the press we have in this production is definitely the star of the show for me."

"In the end The Wipers Times became quite a powerful pressure valve from the horrors of the war," Nick adds. "Not only were they reading it on the frontline but it managed to get back to England and people were reading it there as well."

Nick and Ian have been writing together for more than 30 years, beginning at school in the Seventies collaborating on revues, carrying on at Oxford where Ian took over a humorous magazine Nick was editing, and have continued ever since.

"A writing partnership is much like a marriage," Nick says, "except in a marriage you see rather less of your spouse. Ian's other half Victoria refers to me as 'the wife'. He never buys me presents or sends me flowers, though. And to be fair, I never cook him dinner and completely forgot our Pearl Anniversary. Apart from that, we're very happy, thank you very much."

Ian adds: "The bottom line is that working together is a laugh. We have a rule that we don't embark on any project unless we think it’ll be fun. And it usually is."

And no where more so than on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image in the Eighties.

"We started writing sketches together," Ian continues, "and amazingly they were deemed broadcastable. Five years later we were Spitting Image’s chief writers, commissioned to write 25 minutes of material a week.

Nick adds: "But by then we were utterly burned out and running on empty. Ian was editing Private Eye, and beginning his career as a TV presenter and panel-show contestant. I had packed in my job as a business journalist and was about to begin a career as pocket cartoonist at The Sunday Times.

"There was no obvious reason why either of us should carry on working together – except that we enjoyed it."

The Wipers Times

New Wolsey Theatre

Civic Drive, Ipswich.

November 7 to 12. 7.45pm, 7pm (Tuesday) extra 2.30pm shows on Wednesday and Saturday.

£10 to £30. 01473 295900.

www.wolseytheatre.co.uk