The joke's on us, really

Jocelyn Jee Esien (left), Ninia Benjamin and Tameka Empson take Candid Camera-style pranks to a new level.

Would you have a conversation with a giant tampon? If a stranger asked to lick your face, would you oblige? Could you describe how far it was to the post office — in cow lengths?

If you answered yes to all of the above, it's time you met the 3 Non-Blondes.

Jocelyn Jee Esien, Ninia Benjamin and Tameka Empson are the young, gifted and black stand-up comedy trio behind the BBC's brazen new hidden-camera show.

Each week they head to the streets of London and unleash their shameless alter egos and outrageous ideas on the public. Memorable sketches include Policewoman in Love, in which Empson dry-humps her uniformed partner in the middle of Leicester Square, or Queen of Swaziland, in which Benjamin asks passers-by, "How long to the next town — if I run like a cheetah?"

Jee Esien, who still can't believe she once squatted over a mirror on the tube and waxed her bikini line, says she is comfortable talking to strangers.

"I think I'm mad," she says. "I need help. I need counselling."

Despite the show's obvious parallels with the hackneyed Candid Camera format and its slew of spin-offs (Punk'd, Scare Tactics, Girls Behaving Badly), 3 Non-Blondes is a surprise hit in Britain and the US. The Guardian proclaimed it "the funniest show on television". It has also been praised for elevating female dirtiness to a whole new level.

Even if its extreme toilet humour and sex jokes are bound to offend, 3 Non-Blondes is the first decent comedy starring black women in some time. It's also one of the few to cross the gaping chasm that separates British and American humour.

Jee Esien, who grew up watching Candid Camera, says the show is different because they take no victims.

"Our stuff isn't really about making someone look stupid. Most of the time the joke is on us. We're the ones that do all the stupid things.

"I think sometimes people are quite relieved that we're actually actors. At least they don't go away thinking, 'I met this mad woman on the bus who told me to smell her armpit'."

Producer Gary Reich (Trigger-Happy TV and Da Ali G Show) brought the trio together out of a hunch that black women could get away with pushing the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour.

"In London there is a sense of political correctness and a desire not to offend," he told the LA Times.

Not everyone gets the joke, of course. Jee Esien was once pretending to be a Nigerian preacher when a woman started angrily kicking the crate she was standing on. When Empson played a crying character called "Heartbroken Woman", instead of receiving sympathy she was physically pushed.

As for the other way around, Jee Esien says there's no point making people feel uncomfortable for the sake of it, because it won't take the sketch anywhere.

"You can say to someone, 'Does my breath smell?' and then make them smell your breath. Then they feel uncomfortable and that's the end of the sketch. We're looking for something you can keep coming back to."

Some sketches can go on for up to half an hour but you won't see more than 30 seconds on screen. When Jee Esien did her faith-healing character, a huge crowd gathered to watch her perform "miracles". Even when one of the film crew put on a police uniform and told them she was a known criminal, they stuck around. One woman even asked her to look at her sore shoulder.

Don't they feel exploitative? The test comes after each sketch when they have to return to the people they've pranked to get them to sign a release form. During the first series, 85 per cent agreed for the footage to go to air. But the practice also revealed how camera-shy their own culture is.

"We'll do our thing, run off and then we'll send in Sexy Spanish Girl with huge nipples and she'll go in and go, 'Hello, you sign?' And they always sign.

"But the black people wouldn't sign. They thought they looked like an idiot when actually they didn't do anything."

The filming process is also a headache. Jee Esien is wary of divulging where the cameras are — "They're in my eye and in my nostril" — but she will say those working them are almost as shameless as her and her co-stars. Sometimes they are forced to run maniacally through the streets to keep up.

As if that's not enough, the director likes to make things even harder for them by standing in the middle of the street in a huge pashmina and a Dick Tracy hat yelling, "Cut!"

Only once has she started laughing in the middle of a scene, and that was when she was in a shopping mall, dressed as a criminal, carrying a big black sack of "stolen goods".

"I thought, 'This is ridiculous'. No one asked, 'What are you doing in a shopping centre with a balaclava all dressed in black?' You expect people to say something to you but they don't. They're so polite.

"It's the same when I'm doing something stupid like chasing after someone. People don't expect to see things like that. 'She looks so stupid so why would she do that on TV?' Now I'm asking myself the same question."