Today, in hindsight, I realise that Radioshow would not have happened without certain circumstances. It was born out of a hatred of redneck obtuseness. I studied for two years at a sports school-internate in Vilnius. There were dark, angry people who didn't know how to flush the toilet, because they used to do the long drop. I can forgive stupidity, but not aggressive. Those people became my characters. Rimas: I was involved in music - I wrote for a newspaper, I worked in television, radio. I immediately found it funny when Algis started calling Martynas Starkas on live TV and making stupid comments. M-1 tried to lure me to them, and Radiocentras lured Algis. They offered me more money - maybe 500 "bears", now it would be about one and a half euro. We got the green light to go out in the evenings together. Our characters would say: "We are continuing our radio show." I said: 'Good name. And so the Radioshow was born. Rimas Šapauskas Photo by author After Radiocentre, fate took them to Ultra Vires Radio, the Bentski Show, a humour show,... "Radioshow on LTV, moved to LNK, after the first season organised "Durnių marsh" - travelled across Lithuania with other humourists, left LNK for two seasons on BTV due to the war of ambitions. 1999-2001 spent time on TV3's "Be Tabu", then a year later returned to LNK and created the show "Orbita". It was basically a Radioshow, but the puppets were replaced by actors - Algis and Rimas themselves. They had to cross a psychological barrier, they were used to puppets, they didn't see themselves as comedy actors. But they did, and Ramanauskas and Šapauskas were very good. You just said that it was art. Algis: We were Soviet people. I look with white envy at today's comedians like Mantas Katleris or Mantas Stonkus - they are businessmen, and that's good. Šapauskas and I would rather have a laugh until the morning and not make any plans. We would have made good money if the manager had told us to: "Listen, you bastards, make sure you have ten minutes of funny material by tomorrow, because we have the Siemens Arena coming up in a month." We didn't have that. We lived for that day. We didn't understand that in show business you can't just have fun, you have to work. On the other hand, back then, the air didn't have that smell of monetisation. Rimas: It was fun for me and Algis to joke around, and that was the birth of the popular thing. When we recorded the first cassette "Unplugged" in 1995, we only distributed it among friends. Soon it was being re-recorded by everyone who wanted to. We didn't expect it to be so popular, much less to become a phenomenon. Ratings, concept, marketing - we didn't think in those terms. "The Radioshow took off and just went away. And later on, when we made TV shows, we didn't feel like big businessmen, the most important thing was that we liked it. Yes, we might have made a lot of money, but maybe if we had turned it into a business, we would have got a very different kind of attention and ended up in jail. Art saved us. What TV presenter Rytis Zemkauskas has to say about them. That's why there was a fuss at the beginning, because people were overwhelmed, most of them hadn't seen the British comedy group Monty Python, and they didn't know the work of actor John Cleese. I dare say that Radioshow was the best programme of this genre in Eastern Europe, fitting perfectly in the context of the best of British and American humour, with a sharp social critique of society, a high level of creativity and a high level of innovation. "The Radioshow was followed by other humour programmes, even those in which Algis and Rimas did not take part. They were not immediately provincial. Today, Radioshow is heard on stand-ups, podcasts, Dviračio Show. Most importantly, let us not forget: this phenomenon is also changing literature. And the visual part of the Radioshow is also talented, thanks to the contribution of people who know classical art history, photography and theatre. Original music specially composed by Algis! Algis and Rimas are two of the best voice actors (we forget that term) I have ever heard, anywhere. It seems to me that those who used to say that the Radioshow was some kind of a frenzy of wrinkles were only demonstrating that they belonged to a bygone age. For me, it is one of the best cultural events in Lithuania." NOW they're FULL...