Trouser malfunctions, rat phobias, bee allergies, fire-throwing golf carts - entertainment writer Wayne Savage spoke to T-Money and Green Mile of Storage Hunters ahead of their stand-up tour.

The stars of hit reality TV series Storage Hunters play the Ipswich Corn Exchange tonight and The Apex in Bury St Edmunds on October 18.

Auctioneer Sean Kelly, Tarrell “T-Money” Wright and Cameron “Green Mile” Rowe are known for the anarchic show which sees bidders fighting over other people’s abandoned belongings in the hope of striking gold. The UK version, which has filmed in the region several times, is now in its sixth season. The debut episode attracted more viewers than The Walking Dead.

What many people may not know is they were friends long before doing any TV, having performed stand-up seven time a week, every week, for years when Sean had his own comedy club in San Diego. The trio will each perform before teaming up to auction off items you’ve brought from home in aid of Help for Heroes.

I interrupted T-Money and Green Mile’s lunch - not something the latter usually lets people do - to ask them some questions.

Q: T-Money, what was you biggest hit and miss bin-wise?

The little golf cart that shot fire was pretty easy to sell, a lot of people really took to that. The biggest misfire, but people still loved it, was the deep fat fryer. I didn’t make a lot of money on it but my family loved it because we got the deep fried stuff on the holidays. The weirdest thing.. I had a bin that had a dead rat in a cage, just a bunch of junk and it looked like somebody just left some animals in there to die. I’m terribly afraid of rats so that really freaked me out. I think I just left everything in that bin and lost my money on it.

My favourite moment is really hanging out with Sean and the Green Mile, the camaraderie and the friendship with those guys... The only people I really clashed with was Brandon and Lori, everybody else was fine. There was competition while the auction was going on and then after that we were all friends, but they seemed to take it a little bit more personal.

Q: What’s been the craziest moment on or off camera?

T-Money: On camera, probably the airplane for sale. That really got me excited even though I didn’t have close to enough money to buy it. Off camera it would be a fight that happened, I forget who was fighting but the Green Mile was breaking it up and his pants were falling down at the same time.

Green Mile: I didn’t have my belt on that day. I must have been losing a little bit of weight because my pants are sagging, I went to break up a fight and they came right down. Fights would happen pretty often... Brandon, Lori, Papa Bear... T-Money didn’t really get into a lot of fights, he would just make jokes because we were friends already. Him and Sean loved to mess around. I’m really soft spoken, T-Money grew up in Detroit, I grew up in the suburbs, I didn’t really grow up on the rough edges but I was always a big kid and I always stood up for myself and had to break up fights growing up. That’s why Sean got me on the show, to break up those fights as well.

My favourite moment on the show is the episode when Sean couldn’t do the auction because he’s allergic to bees so I had to step in. I had always heard Sean do it but I had never done it before and tried to imitate him. I was pretty bad at it.

When I first started, I think it was the first episode I ever filmed, I was having trouble opening the locks. You can hear T-Money say “look out he’s having a seizure”. I finally got the hang of it.

Q: Tell me about the stand-up show?

T-Money: I’m super excited. A lot of people only know us from Storage Hunters because that’s how we got famous, what they don’t know is we’ve been doing comedy for 19 years. We used to do comedy shows in San Diego and it was a lot of fun. To come full circle, it’s going to be an amazing show. All three of us, very funny, lot of energy. We can’t wait to let the audience know who we are outside of Storage Hunters.

Green Mile: I’m going to open up the show and do about 30 minutes, then T-Money’s going to come on and do about 30 minutes. Then Sean is going to close up and do about 30 minutes. There’s also going to be an auction after the show that people can participate in. Sean has done a bunch of shows over here already; they’ve all had great reviews so we’re excited.