Like baseball, Lucky Charms cereal and the phrase "How do you like them apples?" Saturday Night Live is an American institution that we just don't get in the UK. SNL was shown occasionally on TV here in the late-90s and early noughties. But, as with most half-decent American comedy imports, it was stranded by schedulers in random time slots, regularly getting bumped for Indoor Bowls from Bolton.
Instead of TV, our first sight of Saturday Night Live cast members like Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, Mike Myers and Will Ferrell has tended to come via movies: The Blues Brothers, Coneheads, Ghostbusters, Trading Places, Wayne's World and Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy are just some of the films launched off the back of the show. The internet, however, has come to the rescue. Saturday Night Live's current hottest young things are not just hits on US TV, they're a global internet phenomena available to all.
Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone - collectively known as The Lonely Island - owe their success to three forces which combined to make them the most discussed comedy trio in blogworld: day jobs at Saturday Night Live (Andy as a performer, Akiva and Jorma as writers); the rise of YouTube just as they were getting their big TV break; and then there's the unrelenting global appetite for comedy songs about penises. Now, since topping the charts on both YouTube and iTunes the threesome are releasing an album, Incredibad, filled with their songs about penises.
"Yes we do joke around about dicks quite a lot," admits Akiva, the self-proclaimed "intelligent one" as we chat in a US hotel suite where they are promoting the album. "But we do have lots of other songs, it's just that the dick ones are the most popular."
"Why isn't a question for us," says the enigmatic, skinny Jorma, "it's a question to ask the world."
Still, these are quite probably the greatest songs about penises ever. Jizz In My Pants documents an extreme case of premature excitement delivered in perfect deadpan Pet Shop Boys fashion, while Dick In A Box is a perfectly pitched caricature of early-90s R&B about a very special surprise ("A gift real special, so take off the top/Take a look inside - it's my dick in a box").
The latter features the vocal talents of Justin Timberlake and a video featuring him and Samberg bringing sexy back by strapping gift boxes to their groins and advising fellas to "1) Cut a hole in a box, 2) Put your junk in that box, 3) Make her open the box".
How did they persuade him to do it? "Drugs mostly," says Jorma.
How do they come up with something like that? "It's nothing new," reckons Akiva. "Guys have been putting their dicks in boxes since caveman days."
"Except back then they were putting their dicks in rocks," suggests Andy, the good-looking one with the abundant hair.
JT isn't the only star making a guest appearance on Incredibad: Jack Black narrates the hysterical Sax Man, Julian Casablancas of the Strokes parodies his own hip status on Boombox and Natalie Portman fires out a volley of profanity ("All the kids looking up to me can suck my dick!" she snarls at one point). The songs have lasting quality because they play against type and also because they hold up musically; both Natalie's Rap and the brilliant Lazy Sunday (which documents an afternoon spent watching The Chronicles Of Narnia) are flawlessly delivered in the style of the Beastie Boys. Just 2 Guyz is a hesitant take on early rap. I'm On A Boat is so authentically of the moment it features the auto-tuned vocals of T-Pain.
Akiva: "What we concentrated on was not being three white guys making fun of hip-hop, but making fun of the characters."
Jorma: "We're using it as a medium to tell a joke, not making fun of music necessarily."
Andy: "In the early days all rap comedy songs were laughing at rap; they were like that Flintstones advert for Pebbles cereal 'I'm a major rapper and I'm here to say/ I love Fruit Pebbles in a major way.'"
Akiva: "Where we grew up it was all about rap and R&B. When we were 12 we were all really into Jodeci and Bobby Brown."
Jorma: "Bel Biv Devoe was the first concert I went to. The moment they got up onstage in their boxers and started playing basketball with 20,000 girls screaming at them was the moment I realised I was the only guy there."
Most of the tracks on Incredibad, a title they accept is as terrible as a recent magazine description of them as "vidiots", began life as Saturday Night Live sketches in a slot The Lonely Island guys have made their own, SNL Digital Shorts. These short films aren't always musical; Laser Cats is a deliberately retro-amateurish sci-fi series about mutant cats who shoot lasers from their eyes, while a student film about giraffes claims that they are from outer space and will destroy mankind. Andy, Akiva and Jorma's TV job has allowed them to be paid for something they were doing anyway - staying up late filming sketches with their mates. They grew up together in the liberal Californian city of Berkeley, went to the University of California to study film and theatre and after graduating shared an apartment (which they named The Lonely Island on account of its unglamorous location beside a freeway).
"We were like 21, 22. We had no jobs really, we were temps doing data entry so it wasn't like, 'C'mon we've got to be up,'" remembers Akiva. "It was perfectly conducive to staying up until five in the morning. Not much has changed, really." As the internet evolved into the broadband era The Lonely Island were among the first people to put their films online and their fame grew via blog links and short film sites like ifilm. Their first projects were a sitcom about a group of friends who become addicted to tooth whitener, a parody of the OC called the Bu, which was constantly interrupted by a talking squirrel called Frazzles and Nintendo Cartoon Hour in which Jorma voices the thoughts of 8os kung fu game characters: "OK, there's a mushroom. Maybe if I stay perfectly still he'll pass right by me."
The internet sketches - still online along with their excellent sketch show Awesometown at thelonelyisland.com - led to a gig writing for the MTV Movie Awards. That brought them to the attention of legendary Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels. Despite the fact that all three appear in their own sketches - Jorma and Akiva do an excellent line in super-awkward geeks based on their 12-year-old selves - it was only Andy who joined SNL's performing cast. Not that the other two seem bothered by their friend's TV-star status: Akiva has carved out a side career as a music promo director (for We Are Scientists and Eagles Of Death Metal); apart from the writing, Jorma has a acting career of his own and stars alongside Will Ferrell in the forthcoming Lost In Time.
In the tradition of Saturday Night Live all three have already collaborated on the big screen, Akiva directing and Andy and Jorma starring as stepbrothers in Hot Rod. The movie received criticism but has much to recommend it, not least some violent wrestling with Ian McShane and a soundtrack that consists almost entirely of 80s Swedish soft metallers Europe. In the wake of the hype surrounding Incredibad - the most anticipated comedy music album since This Is Spinal Tap - Hot Rod will get a second chance. But as children of YouTube they're well versed in hysteria and its dark side.
Jorma: "YouTube comments follow a similar pattern: 'This is awesome...'; 'This sucks...'; 'You will all die.'"
Akiva: "The important thing to remember is that most of the people who comment on YouTube are 12 years old."
If that's the case then it's 12-year-olds who have made The Lonely Island famous. And, indeed, what they say about it is true. They are awesome, they do suck and one day they will all die, but for now they are kings of the internet. Or at least the section of it that likes songs about dicks in boxes.