Ronni Ancona and Alistair McGowan look back: We would have killed each other if we'd stayed as a couple. Instead, our friendship is eternal'

"I can see the desire in my eyes. The expression, the whole stance screams Watch our show! Look at me!, as if I'm trying to reach the audience through the lens. Now I have the look of a relatively contented man. That desperate sense of yearning has gone. The story of Ronni and I is still very moving to me. She's so gorgeous she just takes your breath away. But we had a tempestuous relationship, and this was taken during a tough time."

"She and I broke up in 1999, a few months before shooting the first series. We had been together for seven years. When you've had that sort of history, it never goes away. There was hurt there, and a bit of pain, while also great passion and love for the time we spent together. She and I first met at a comedy club on a boat."

Ronni Ancona was born in Louth, Lincolnshire in 1969 and raised in Troon, Ayrshire; she studied at Edinburgh College of Art and trained as a teacher before turning to comedy. Alistair McGowan was born in Evesham, Worcestershire in 1964 and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before becoming an impressionist. The pair met on the London comedy circuit in the 1990s and co-created the Bafta-winning sketch show Big Impression, which aired from 1999 to 2003 and became a BBC hit. The couple had a tempestuous, passionate seven-year relationship that ended in 1999 before filming the first series. Promotional photographs captured mixed emotions, and Ancona later launched the podcast Hal & Ronni in Pieces with Hal Cruttenden.

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