Inside No9: Swansong for deliciously dark comedy anthology series

We’re going to be so sorry to see it go, but rather than mourning its loss, maybe we should all rejoice in the fact that the duo managed to devise so many wickedly entertaining stories over the course of 10 years – a grand total of 55 tales that have delighted, confused and amused us.

Perhaps once the current run is over, it’s time to go back to the very beginning again and sample each episode, or at least your favourites – they’re all available on the BBC iPlayer, including the very first edition, Sardines, which takes place mostly inside a wardrobe, and one of the greatest 29 minutes of TV ever made, A Quiet Night In, a silent story of burglars trying to pull off a heist at a lavish property.

“It’s really difficult to pick favourites and one shouldn’t of course,” says Pemberton while looking back at the entire run.

“But to work with legends like Sir Derek Jacobi, Simon Callow, to have people like Rula Lenska and Michele Dotrice and Felicity Kendal, Fiona Shaw.

"To work with these greats you’ve watched growing up, not necessarily our contemporaries, I think we get an extra thrill from watching and working with people like that, who we’ve seen on the TV, and suddenly you can’t believe you’re acting alongside them.”

“I think a character that still tickles us both actually is the character that Lorraine Ashbourne played in Nana’s Party called Auntie Carol,” adds Shearsmith. “She was this really vivacious, fun character that was, at the heart of it, deeply sort of tragic. But she brought such a quality to it and it was exactly as we hoped.

“When we do the parts, we often read them and we play them as we imagine they’ll be done, and she sort of did it exactly as we wanted to do it and brought more to it. It was great to see she brought such a life to it and it’s a really funny performance.”

Now that it’s all coming to an end, will there be anything they miss about working on the programme?

“The trappings of the writing process bring with it a lot of fun for me and Steve, because we do get to sit and catch up,” claims Shearsmith. “So, we do laugh a lot in and around the sort of torture of trying to come up with the stories.”

Pemberton agrees: “I think if we’re going to miss anything, it’s that total freedom that we’ve had to just be two people in a room, coming up with ideas, and then seeing them go all the way to television. It’s just been an incredible honour to have the privilege of doing that, and with your best friend.”

But it’s not quite all over. A stage version featuring the duo is heading to the West End next year. And, of course, there’s still one more episode to go…