OK, band meeting! The Flight of the Conchords have announced that they are preparing to tour the UK and Ireland. The musical comedy duo, comprising Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, will be dusting down classics such as Hiphopopotamus v Rhymenoceros, Foux du Fafa and Business Time for a string of dates starting at the Hammersmith Apollo, London, in April 2018.

McKenzie and Clement met at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and began to play genre-mashing spoof songs at fringe nights, gaining an international audience with their award-winning set at the Edinburgh festival in 2002. The following year they returned to Edinburgh and played the Gilded Balloon, where their show High on Folk was heralded by the Guardian as a “late-night gem”. After recording a BBC radio series and winning a Grammy for best comedy album, they made two seasons of an Emmy-nominated TV series for HBO, charting the band’s attempts to break America.

The series featured fellow comedians in supporting roles: Rhys Darby as their ambitious and punctilious manager Murray, Kristen Schaal as their creepy super-fan Mel, and Arj Barker as a dubious sage named Dave. Aziz Ansari, Todd Barry and Eugene Mirman all had appearances.

After the show finished in 2009, McKenzie had a role in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and won as Oscar in 2012 for the song Man or Muppet in the movie The Muppets. Clement’s recent credits have included a role in Divorce, written by Sharon Horgan, and voicing a character in Moana.

Flight of the Conchords recently toured America and New Zealand. After their London dates, the duo will visit Birmingham, Manchester, Dublin, Glasgow, Leeds and Liverpool.