‘I thought I might live to be 100 and end up skint, but I think that’s sorted now’

For a man considered to perhaps be one of the funniest in London right now, Richard Bean is a dour old so and so – meant in the nicest possible way, of course.

It just goes to show that you can take the boy out of Hull, but you can’t take Hull out of the boy. That Northern attitude of never being too pleased with yourself (or at least never showing the outside world) is strong with this one, despite the fact that the 55-year-old left Hull over 30 years ago.

Bean is the toast of London after the runaway success of his latest play at the National Theatre. One Man, Two Guvnors, starring James Corden, is Bean’s take on the 1746 Carlo Goldoni classic comedy normally translated as The Servant of Two Masters.

Theatre critic doyen Michael Billington, in his five star Guardian review, called it “one of the funniest productions in the National’s history”. On the other end of the newspaper political spectrum, The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Spencer confirmed “the National Theatre has the feelgood hit of the summer on its hands”.

Watching the show the night before we meet, I can confirm One Man, Two Guvnors is one of the funniest nights at the theatre I have ever had – and judging by the reaction of the people around me, there was unanimous agreement.

You got another standing ovation last night, I tell Bean as he arrives in a small snug on the top floor of the National Theatre with his hang dog expression.

“Oh did we? The actors normally text me, going, ‘ha ha you missed another ovation’,” says Bean, deadpan.

“We had one on Press night and I was sat right in the middle of the stalls. I was sitting there thinking, ‘I can’t stand up for my own play’ so I just stayed in my seat with everyone around me thinking I was being churlish.”

I first met the writer in the glorious summer of 2005, when England were busy winning the Ashes. Bean, a cricket fan, who finally accepted his knees were no longer up to playing five years ago, seemed irritated that his play was opening at the Royal Court that night – while England were playing the Aussies just around the corner.

The play, Harvest, was a revelation. Premiered to the world in posh Sloane Square, the accents on the stage were resolutely, defiantly, East Riding. It was three hours long and the story, set in an East Yorkshire farm, spanned a timescale of more than a century.

It was Bean’s first major hit and brought him an Olivier nomination and mass recognition.

Since then he has returned to Hull a couple of times, to see his plays at Hull Truck, first with Up On Roof, a comedy drama about the Hull Prison Riots of 1976, and last year with Pub Quiz is Life and, even though he claims he is now a North London, Stoke Newington boy, Hull remains a part of his fabric.

“It’s your roots, so I probably will always write about it,” says Bean. “Pinter never really got very far from East London in his writing and Alan Bennett’s always very Leeds. I’m probably going to write a trawler story, because that’s what I understand.

“Plus the story of the trawlers and the men who sailed them, it’s all very mythic – man and nature and all that.

“If I was an American, I’d probably have the Western in my blood, but because I’m from Hull, I have trawlermen.”

Although his humour seems dry when you speak to him, there is no denying that Bean is also a great deal of fun.

A former stand up comedian, his skills have come to the fore in the writing of One Man, Two Guvnors.

In the play, which is populated entirely with wonderful performances, James Corden plays Francis Henshall, an eternally hungry failed skiffle player, who finds himself working for two bosses in Brighton in 1963. One, Rachel Crabbe, is disguised as her dead gangland twin, and, in her brutal mop-like wig, bears an uncanny r esemblance to Ringo Starr.

Francis’s other employer is a snooty toff, Stanley Stubbers, who not only killed Rachel’s brother but is also her secret lover.

Neither boss is aware the other is in Brighton, as Francis bounces between them like a shuttlecock and, in the play’s most famous scene, serves them both dinner simultaneously.

It is the strangest – and boldest – mashing together of styles I have witnessed. There’s a bit of pantomime in there, it looks like a farce, there’s self-referencing theatrical devices and the characters regularly break the fourth wall and address the audience directly – at several points audience members are brought up on stage.

Bean admits: “I know what you mean about those different styles, with the little asides to the audience. We don’t really have that in modern theatre, but when I was writing it, I just thought, ‘why not?’. So I stuck them in,” he says.

Much of the comedy comes from the unexpected incidents that come with the audience being brought up on stage. I ask Bean about one particular part of the show, which I was convinced was being ad-libbed.

Bean laughs openly. “You’ve been had mate, it’s in the script.Some of it is real audience members, so I sat down with James and wrote a bunch of lines he can use, the sort of stuff I would use in clubs when I was doing comedy.”

The jokes are so good that, as we sit in the top of the National, Bean is having to have something of a career rethink.

“It’s been a bit weird, to be honest. I’m a bit of a workaholic, but I haven’t written a word for two months, so that’s been strange,” he says. “I had an ambition for the past 10 years, which was to sort out a pension plan, because I thought I might live to be 100 and end up skint, but I think that’s sorted now. The change of ambition now is that I’m going to write plays I just want to write.”

A couple of weeks before we meet, the theatre released 40,000 more tickets for the show and extended its run – they sold out in 24 hours.

“When that happens with a show, it kind of consumes you. There’s talk of it going into the Adelphi in the West End – it’s a 1,400 seater, one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatres and there’s talk of Broadway. I get up and try to write, but I sit there working out the royalties,” he laughs, before swiftly adding, “don’t put that in,” – that old worry about looking a bit flash.

“It sort of kills your creativity a bit, it forces a bit of a career rethink. I’m going to be taking a few months off and working out what it is I really want to do, what I want to write, and only doing that.”

Bean began his career with the play Toast, based on the Hull factory where he spent his summers as a student, which premiered at the smaller space at the Royal Court Theatre, following up with Under the Whaleback, about Hull trawlermen in the same theatre a couple of years later.

Harvest, in 2005, was when Bean really upped his game, writing a piece that was sweeping, historic, political and hilarious – although the humour of the piece was incredibly dark.

In 2009, England People Very Nice was produced at the National Theatre, heralding Bean’s step up into the really big leagues – and also brought with it a huge amount of controversy. The play saw Bean branded a racist and saw thousands of column inches written about the play.

Bean is sanguine about the whole affair, instead of particularly addressing it, telling a funny story about a man who invaded the stage when he was doing an interview during the play’s run.

At the time, I wondered if it might spell the end of the relationship with the National.

“Nah, don’t forget, Nick (Hytner, the theatre’s artistic director) directed that and he loved the naughty political incorrectness of it. His favourite show is Family Guy and I like to think it was a play that treated political correctness the way that show does,” says Bean.

There are flashes of the politically incorrect side of Bean in One Man, but it is mainly just a good night at the theatre.

Finally, Bean drops the act of no nonsense Tyke and embraces his success fully.

“It is a great night out, isn’t it? I’ve had actor mates, tight as you can get, asking if I can get them a discount because they don’t want to pay £90 for two tickets. The following day, they always text to say it’s the best 90 quid they’ve spent. Really thrilling.”