Loud, sassy, original, bright and fearless. If you’ve caught a glimpse of Frisky and Mannish you’ll know why they’re the names on everyone’s lips.

From Radio 1 to the Edinburgh Fringe, Frisky and Mannish are being hailed as the new act to watch, and if you’ve got your head screwed on you’ll make sure you catch them at Oxford’s Playhouse on Saturday.

But while their Pop Centre Plus tour might be original, the comedy duo remain rather difficult to categorise.

“People say we’ve invented a whole new genre but we haven’t, we just mess around with pop songs. What’s more important is connecting with your audience and making them laugh,” Mannish says.

Frisky (Laura) and Mannish (Matthew) met at Oxford University in 2003 where they were both studying English. They joined the Oxford Review, even performing Guys and Dolls at the Playhouse, but didn’t single each other out for a life on stage together.

“Everyone says how well we work together,” Frisky laughs, “how great our rapport is and how we play off each other, but we didn’t know that at the beginning.”

In fact their current routine only came about when a friend asked them to supply songs for a charity night.

“We were trying to make ends meet in a flat in London while realising that our dazzling future wasn’t going as well as we’d hoped,” Mannish remembers. “But when we started doing the songs it went from there really.”

If you’ve watched the pair on YouTube you’ll know what all the fuss is all about.

Their previous two tours have been sell-out successes thanks to their hilarious reinterpreting of songs, mixing them up, adding serious tones to light-hearted tunes and visa-versa.

For example, when appearing on Radio 1, Frisky (who sings) and Mannish (piano and accompanist), both 26, performed a mix of everything from nursery rhymes to Girls Aloud and a soulful Saturday Night by Whigfield, causing Scott Mills to name them “one of the funniest acts I’ve ever had on my show”.

“The Radio 1 show was a huge thing because until then most people hadn’t heard of us,” Frisky adds.

Since then they have gone from strength to strength, selling out at the Fringe every year while perfecting their act.

And do they always succeed? “Pretty much, yes,” Mannish says. “You have to go on stage with attitude, thinking ‘let me bring you round to this’. The less expectation people have the better.

“Because we’ve been working together for so long we find it easy to fit into each others rhythms. People think we work hard to get it right, but actually we just love being on stage and feeding off people’s reactions,” Frisky adds.

The reactions are of course fuelled by Frisky’s ultra-cool corsetted, high heeled, red-haired creation.

Did she craft her own look? “It began when I found a designer PVC corset in a Camden vintage shop for £20 and fell in love with it. And shoe-wise I try to go for Vivienne Westwood.

“But as soon as I realised that the silhouette was our trademark I began having my corsets made-to-measure,” she says.

As for their upcoming appearance at Oxford Playhouse, it won’t be the first time, as Frisky and Mannish performed there as part of the recent 125th celebrations.

“We went down very well I think,” Mannish says. “Everything else was rather dry. We came on and did Barbara Streisand and went down a storm. And then he grins and adds: “At first we used to worry people would start booing when we didn’t do stand-up, because you never know if a gigs in the bag until the very end, but then that’s half the fun.”

Frisky and Mannish present Pop Centre Plus at Oxford Playhouse on Saturday. Call the box office on 01865 305305 or visit oxfordplayhouse.com