Hugh Laurie tells of Stephen Fry reunion idea

Hugh Laurie said he favoured a revue show with Fry

Actor Hugh Laurie has said he and fellow performer Stephen Fry have discussed plans to work together again.

Laurie told presenter Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs that the former comedy duo "often" talk about a reunion.

But he said whatever they came up with, it would not be a sketch show.

"I think probably sketching is a young man's game because, by and large, it's about mocking people much older than you," he said.

"We are now not only the age of cabinet ministers, we are actually probably older than half the cabinet."

The pair met at Cambridge University and made four series of the sketch show A Bit of Fry and Laurie.

They later worked together in a TV adaptation of PG Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster.

Laurie said he had a "pretty instantaneous" friendship with Fry, and they have "barely" had a cross word between them in all the years of their friendship.

"That's not really natural, is it, to never have a cross word? It seems odd," he admitted.

Laurie said he hoped their future project would be a revue-style show like those of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, who were popular in the 1950s and 1960s.

"A sort of Flanders and Swann-type stage revue with a couple of wing chairs and a rug and a decanter of Madeira and my colleague will recount amusing stories and I will sit at the piano and play ditties," he said.

"I know no more than that - we have not advanced with this idea but that would be my pick of the way to go."

'Big cheese'

Laurie has moved back to the UK after eight years in Hollywood starring in the hit medical drama House. The show reached a global audience of 81 million.

Laurie said he has a different level of fame in the UK as House was not as big as it was in other countries.

"I became a very big cheese in France, Italy and Germany," he joked.

In the US he said there were "things I don't do and places I can't go to".

He said he had not learned to surf in California because he knew he would be photographed.

"You're not allowed that sort of tentative first experience of anything without having your picture taken."

Laurie said digital cameras did not exist when he signed up to play the main character, Doctor Gregory House, and now they are everywhere.

"People photograph everything and nothing - no interaction is deemed to have actually happened unless somebody has a picture of it," he said.

"Nobody is satisfied with having met a person without having a picture to prove it."

He added: "I think that is odd and I think it's so odd I think it might actually be starting to alter the way we think about each other and the way we think about general day-to-day social interaction."