You need to know two things about Flight of the Conchords - the band and comedy act which stars New Zealanders Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. First, you need to know that their eponymous TV show, which ran on BBC4 at the end of 2007, is extraordinarily funny. Part sitcom, part showcase for McKenzie and Clement's inspired collection of musical parodies, it details the band's fictional struggle to get gigs and girls, land a record deal, eat and just not get mugged too often, after relocating from New Zealand to Manhattan. Flight of the Conchords is gentle, sweet and reassuringly human; and an important departure for the UK comedy scene, which has been dominated by the darkness of Ricky Gervais's unlovable alter egos for the last few years.
Second, you need to know about Flight of the Conchords, because 31-year-old Bret McKenzie and 34-year-old Jemaine Clement represent the next great archetype in male sexiness. They're on the tipping point of gaining mainstream recognition for their hotness, which means that you're about to start fancying them. Madly. I know this, partly because they were listed high in salon.com's 2007 Sexiest Men Alive list; and partly because I've found that if you mention their work in a group situation - at a dinner party perhaps - you'll find that while most of the assembled women will look at you blankly, because they haven't yet experienced the Conchords, at least two of them will start hyperventilating at the very thought of Bret and Jemaine, before launching themselves into breathless paeans on the relative virtues of each man.
McKenzie and Clement are unlikely sex objects. On screen, they don't correspond with any existing notions on hotness. They are quite unlike the classically handsome men who monopolise this year's Oscar nominations, for example: your traditionally sexy Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis and Viggo Mortensen. McKenzie and Clement certainly aren't as Alpha as that lot - they aren't Alpha at all, in fact. They are hopeless and hapless, bumbling and bemused. They are vague. They are low-key, subtle and understated to the point of actually very nearly being asleep. They are definitely not dangerous. Physically, they are gawky and hairy and ungroomed. They wear curious clothes (animal appliqué jumpers, doubled-up denim, a swirly-blouse-focused outfit that Clement describes as 'Prince but when he's just going to the store or something - casual Prince', and my own personal fave, shrunken matching leather suits). They are tall, but in no way buff - McKenzie's skinny, Clement describes himself as 'an ogre who works in a library'.
I fly to Los Angeles, where Flight of the Conchords are granting a rare audience with the press, to see if I can make any sense of Conchord lust, close up.
I shouldn't be doing this.
There's a thin line between being a journalist who's discovered some inspired and inspiring, hyper-exciting breakthrough act and who is keen to share said act with as many other people as she possibly can - and a journalist who is in fact just a bit of an obsessed stalker. I have crossed that line, and ambled into crazy territory. I don't think I'm dangerous. But I don't know for definite.
Jet-lagged and sweaty-palmed, I enter the room of the hotel in West Hollywood, where the Conchords are waiting.
I am immediately struck by two things: Clement has grown a beard, and McKenzie is straightforward gobsmackingly beautiful, fine-featured and flawlessly skinned, a fact I'd somehow missed until this point, probably because I'd been distracted by how funny and geeky he is.
Flight of the Conchords are tired. They've flown in for the week from Wellington, where they insist they still live (although they spent most of 2007 in New York and LA); via a gadget exposition in Las Vegas, at which they performed. They are however, in good moods. They are giggly, they are engaged. They talk in monotone, New Zealand-accented stereo, picking up on each other's sentences, elaborating and finishing them off.
They're not entirely enamoured of their burgeoning celebrity, which is, they say, why they give few interviews. They don't mind me, they say, because my article will run in the UK, 'which is far away'.
'But it's good,' says McKenzie, of their blossoming profile. 'Or ... It's definitely an experience. But I wouldn't say it's fun.'
'Yeah,' says Clement. 'No. We thought we had it perfect before, in that ...'
McKenzie: ' ... we could come over to America and work, and then go back to New Zealand and go back to being us ...
Clement: ' ...and no one would know. And we would occasionally say: "We've got a TV show in America!" And no one would believe us.'
He laughs, a big, loud laugh. McKenzie laughs, a breathier, girlier one.
'But they know now.'
They stop laughing; they look a little glum.
Flight of the Conchords did not expect to be famous, much less fancied on an international basis. Clement and McKenzie originally met in 1998 at Victoria University in Wellington, where they were studying film and theatre.
'And we were in drama club,' says McKenzie, 'which was like Footlights or something. Er, I think. From what I can gather. It was like a drama club, but ...'
Clement: 'It was less chummy than that. It was more a random group of people ...'
McKenzie: 'It sounds very Oxford. When you say, "We were in a drama club together" it sounds different to what it was ... we weren't doing Shakespeare productions.'
Clement: 'They do! The drama club do do Shakespeare productions!'
McKenzie: 'But we just did this one comedy show. It was 25 people, all doing a self-devised show about body image. And we got randomly put into a group of five guys. And Jemaine and I happened to be in the same group.'
'I could tell Bret was really funny instantly,' says Clement.
'It was all pretty funny,' says McKenzie, 'because the costume was bike shorts. Cotton sort of bike shorts, skin-coloured. And then we had this Velcro-y ... you know those pencils, those sort of floppy hair pencils that you have? What do you call those?'
Er, like, Gonk hair pencils?
'Gonk, is it? With hair, pink hair? We had those, with pink hair, and then Velcro penises, so you could rip your penis off! And then put on these fake triangle things ...'
Clement: 'So you'd have a triangle, a sort of mound of Venus, made of Velcro; and a fake penis ...'
McKenzie: 'So there were 25 people, all wearing these naked suits!'
Clement: 'Yeah. And the women would wear fake breasts ... except that once Bret wore fake breasts ...'
McKenzie: 'Yis ... I actually wore fake breasts, when we needed a girl character.'
Clement: 'And someone would go up to Bret and rip his penis off! And he would put his hands up and someone would attach fake breasts! It was pretty funny. Well. I found it pretty funny.'
Months after the penis-ripping show debuted, McKenzie and Clement moved in together. McKenzie took up the lease on a decrepit house, because he wanted to perform a comedy play in its garden as part of a festival in Wellington, and that was the only way he could get access to it. 'So I gathered together all the friends that I could find ...'
'Sounds like a story!' says Clement. 'Sounds like a show!'
McKenzie: 'Kind of sounds like an American sitcom. Ha! So I gathered up seven friends who were willing to live there while we did the show, and Jemaine was one of them. And we moved in.'
Clement: 'And it was really, really falling apart. It was a student flat. It was like The Young Ones.'
McKenzie: 'It really was very like The Young Ones. The rats would sit on the floor and watch TV with us.'
Clement: 'And talk!'
McKenzie: 'They didn't talk, but it was close. And if they had talked, we would have heard them.'
Clement: 'They were confident! Ha ha! Confident rats.'
McKenzie: 'Very confident rat colony in our house. Way more confident than us. So it was kind of a strange way to move into this house. But we did the show and stayed there for a couple of years.'
They dropped out of university simultaneously.
'We fell off the rails,' says Clement.
Really?
'Ha! No.'
Rather, they performed. McKenzie played drums in various jazz bands, Clement developed other comedy acts with other comedy consorts, they both auditioned for TV adverts.
Were they ambitious?
They pause.
'Er, kind of,' says Clement, eventually.
'I think we were ambitious,' says McKenzie. 'But definitely not ambitious compared to, like, the American world of ambitious. We go into meetings here, and it's just so obvious that we're ... very different.'
They scraped by financially.
McKenzie: 'I was always quite fascinated by this idea of a job and getting paid, each week.'
Clement: 'Yeah. So was I.'
McKenzie: 'The thought of getting a pay cheque was just ... amazing.'
And they began writing songs together. They taught themselves guitar, attempted to play songs that were much too difficult for beginners, failed, and started writing their own songs instead. The comedy/musical act Flight of the Conchords evolved from there. McKenzie and Clement are hazy on the timeline, and keen to point out that 'we didn't really do it very often. For a while, we did a gig maybe once a fortnight,' says McKenzie. 'But it was just a little five-minute thing, at a very low-key comedy night. And honestly, more for something to do.'
'Because we didn't have jobs,' says Clement.
But it was persistently well received, so they began taking it to festivals - to Edinburgh, Calgary and Montreal. 'Because we're a duo,' says McKenzie, 'we've always kind of ebbed and flowed, and while one person's feeling like putting in a bit of energy, the other one can pull back; or you're both, like, egging each other back with casualness.'
Clement: 'So, like, one of us would say: Let's go and do this festival! And the other would be [aloof]: Oh. OK. Between us, we manage to do stuff. Ha! Miraculously.'
An HBO talent scout spotted them in Montreal in 2004, and invited them to the US to discuss a TV show.
'It was amazingly exciting: American people saw us, and telephoned us from America, and asked us to come over and do some shows!' says Clement. 'It was just exciting that someone from America had seen us!'
They went to New York and shot a one-off show for a pilot. The first series got greenlit as a result; and it'll be to HBO's eternal credit that this major US TV channel ploughed money into such a kooky, un-American and understated affair.
Filming was tough for them. They'd pursued work at their own pace for a long time; New York was cold and the workload, they say, seemed overwhelming. They fretted over the show. They become almost angst-ridden at the thought of it. 'It's really hard and you don't know if people are going to like it. And then you watch the first cut, and you don't like it yourself. And then it gets fixed up and stuff, but early on you go: Oh God, what have I done?'
Clement got pneumonia, they both lost so much weight that 'we looked like skeletons', says McKenzie. And I suspect they were homesick for Wellington. 'I couldn't really breathe. Or speak,' says Clement. 'Yeah, but it was amazing ...' says McKenzie. 'It's like, uh ... really high and then really low.'
When they heard there was to be a second series, they both stopped sleeping. I get the feeling they're somewhat relieved that the writers' strike is holding up the whole process.
What are their long-term plans?
'Survival!' says Clement.
'I would like to parody acid jazz and new jack swing,' says McKenzie.
'I would like to wear as much denim as the costume designer will let me get away with,' says Clement.
What about their celebrity, I ask. Where would they like that to go?
'Away!' says McKenzie.
'Good answer,' says Clement.
There are, they grudgingly concede, pluses to the fame.
'We got free shoes,' says McKenzie.
They were also named Wellingtonians of the Year.
Congratulations, I say.
'Thank you,' says Clement; and then, with pseudo-smugness: 'Peter Jackson has won it.'
'I know the mayor,' says McKenzie.
'And you went to that party,' says Clement. 'When David Beckham came to Wellington.'
'True,' says McKenzie. 'But I didn't get in.'
I tentatively approach the issue of their sex-symbol status.
Are they aware that women - er - appreciate them?
There's a pause.
'Well, we only get a weird sense of what's going on, in terms of the er, fan, er, base, from the internet. But that's a pretty strange view, because ...'
McKenzie tails off.
It's warped? I say.
'Yis!' says Clement.
My friends have either never heard of you, or are insanely in love with you, I say.
'So you mean, once women know, then they ...' says Clement.
Go wild over you! Yes!
He giggles.
Then:
'I guess ... I haven't really been going out there much,' says Clement. 'But I went out the other night, and four girls came up to me, and they were giggling, and jumping up and down, and ...' he laughs, shyly ' ... and it was quite weird. Especially because I've never really been that ... confident in that ... way. And to have girls treat me in that way ... so it was really different. And ... it's kind of my dream come true.'
So - not the worst thing in the world?
'No!' says Clement. 'No!'
But they didn't launch themselves on to the music/comedy circuit with half an eye on how that would affect their chances with women, I ask. It wasn't a major motivating factor, or anything?
'Oh, yeah, it was!' says Clement. 'Totally!'
Do women go for them more as musicians, or as comedians, I wonder.
'Ooooh!' says McKenzie. 'Hee hee!'
'I think you get different kinds of women for each,' says Clement.
'And we get them both. Because we go between both,' says McKenzie.
Which is not entirely true.
While I was loitering in the hotel lobby, waiting for my allotted slot with Clement and McKenzie, I spotted two girls. Two good-looking, hipster girls, with excellent haircuts, sharp coats - and New Zealand accents. Two girls who, it transpires, are McKenzie and Clement's fiancées.
I tell the Conchords that I met their fiancées, which is not true - I'd eavesdropped on them as they'd discussed the relative virtues of Hillary and Obama with Mara the HBO press officer, but I didn't actually manage to introduce myself.
'Oh, you met Hannah?' says McKenzie.
Er ... I say.
Clement says nothing.
The point is, you're engaged and therefore not in a position to exploit your growing legions of groupies, I say.
'No,' says Clement.
Bad timing, I say.
'Yeah,' says Clement, downbeat.
McKenzie starts giggling.
'It's terrible being engaged,' says Clement.
'No!' says McKenzie. 'Don't say that!'
Clement laughs his big, loud laugh.
We talk more: about the song Clement started the night before 'which is kind of based on "Roxanne"'; and about the waiter he met in Wellington who said he was constantly mistaken for McKenzie: 'and who I noticed was wearing a T-shirt with a puppy on it. Totally working it. Yis.' They tell me that, whenever they go into a meeting with Hollywood industry powers they have to explain to them in advance that even though they might not seem enthusiastic, they really really are, and it's just their New Zealand way. McKenzie worries about how he'll react if he's ever in a club, and one of their songs is played: 'because that would be a nightmare. Awful. Awful. The expectation.' They tell me that their TV characters have secret surnames. 'I never say it. But I'm Jemaine Clemaine,' says Clement. 'And I'm Bret McClegnie,' says McKenzie. And then they laugh and they laugh.
It's at this point that I dissolve into fannish gibbering, which they take in good spirit; but I know it's probably time to go. I have at least managed to navigate our time together without trying to touch either one of them.
Can I deconstruct their sexiness any better now I've met them?
Clearly, they're funny, which is traditionally sexy. And they're brilliant musicians, which is traditionally sexy too; the comedy element in their music doesn't detract from that. And maybe, a lot of their charm is in their un-Alpha-ness. Maybe we're tiring, finally, of self-entitled, self-consciously powerful men, and beginning to fancy something a little less obvious. But I think most of all, it's the combination of Bret and Jemaine, which is sexy. It's the closest straight women get to hot boy-on-boy action. As salon.com put it:
'A guy with a guitar is hot. A guy with an accent is hot. And a guy who can make us laugh is really, really hot. What, then, could be better than a man who embodies all of the above? Two men, who do. And though we may love McKenzie for his reedy shyness and Clement for his inexplicable overconfidence, what we love best about them is how appealing they are together.'
Damn right. And so, to those of you who haven't already fallen for Flight of the Conchords: prepare yourself for your defining crush of 2008.
· Series 1 of Flight of the Conchords is on DVD, £12.97, amazon.co.uk. The EP The Distant Future, £6.98