Honed on stage and brought to life through the inventive antics of a comedy troupe who refused to see sketch comedy as formula, The Kids In The Hall hit TV sets in 1988 and quickly built a robust following enamored with their quirky, often surreal sense of humor. The five core Kids more often than not played virtually every role on screen, both male and female, while tackling characters and subjects seemingly spit out of a blender of the bizarre. The result was a show that ran until 1994, and which still boasts legions of devoted fans.

With season 4 of The Kids In The Hall hitting stores today, managed to catch up with Dave Foley, one of the most recognizable Kids who later went on to continued comedy fame in the central role of the hit sitcom NewsRadio. Here's what he had to say about the legacy he and the Kids left behind:

: I guess you've got a new Kids In The Hall set coming out, is that right?

DAVE: That's right, yeah.

: Well, you know, we're DVD In My Pants.com, so some of our readers might be stuffing the set down their pants. Do you have any plans to do that?

DAVE: To stuff it down my pants?

: Yeah.

DAVE: Only for protection.

: During your Kids In The Hall days you had some shirt-stuffing experience, the fake boobs, that kind of thing.

DAVE: Well, yes. There was certainly a lot of tucking. Pinning up a skirt, you know sometimes you had to be very careful. You'd show everything.

: Wardrobe malfunctions you'd have to worry about?

DAVE: Oh yeah. We're usually packed into several pairs of extra strong support hose.

: Any advice for folks out there who might want to sport some fake breasts to the office?

DAVE: You know what? Go with something appropriate to your body shape. If you have a big ribcage, you don't want to have big tits on top of that. Go with something a little smaller. Go with something tasteful. Think about how it's going to hang.

: <laughs> Now, with that a big part of your humor, you guys developed a real big cult following in America despite a lot of Americans being really skittish about homosexuality, especially at that time. How did you manage to do that?

DAVE: You know, I think by just not caring.

: Just saying, 'the hell with it?'

DAVE: Yeah. We never thought of anything we did as being shocking or in any way, you know, revolutionary or anything, we just did things we thought were funny. We liked to write about things that happened to us, and since one of the guys in our group is gay, and because a lot of our friends are gay, that's part of our experience. We just wanted to write about experiences we had in our lives.

: Was it more a matter of just cracking yourselves up rather than worrying about what others would think?

DAVE: Yeah. We always wrote from the standpoint that we would do anything if it made us laugh. Really we never had any other criteria. Well, I guess we tried, if it seemed like it was something somebody else would do, we would try not to do it.

: That was one of the hallmarks of the series, was that people hadn't seen something like that before.

DAVE: We wanted to do stuff that we hadn't seen. Sometimes somebody would come in with a funny sketch and we'd say, yeah, that kind of feels like a Saturday Night Live sketch, or often the criticism would be, “It's too Monty Python,” and we wouldn't do it, even if it was funny.

: My thought when you were on the air, I can recall just being baffled, which was a big part of the humor. Just thinking, “What the hell are these guys doing?”

DAVE: <laughs> A lot of times we baffled each other.

: So that kind of surreal comedy, does that mean we can blame you guys for folks like Tom Green and other surreal Canadian imports?

DAVE: I think Tom would not be upset with me for saying you could blame us a little bit. I think he was definitely influenced by the show and definitely influenced by our approach to comedy.

: Have you seen a lot of the sketch comedy that's out there these days? Do you watch it, and if you do, do you see a lot of what you guys were doing out there?

DAVE: I can't think of much ... there isn't much new going on in sketch comedy right now that I can think of, unless you know of something I've been missing.

: No. It's MTV, mostly, when they're not doing their reality shows, they get a lot of these bizarre shows that seem to be coming out of left field. That's the kind of vibe, to me at least, that you guys were tossing out.

DAVE: The last sketch shows I really watched were, I really loved Upright Citizens Brigade when they were on Comedy Central, and I loved Mr. Show, and actually I produced a pilot for a group called the Hollow Men. I really liked their stuff. Is there anyone doing sketch right now on TV, other than Saturday Night Live and Mad TV?

: Beyond that I don't know that there's anyone doing that kind of ensemble sketch stuff. The show I had in mind is Andy Milonakis, but I don't know if that counts as sketch comedy.

DAVE: I don't think I've seen him.

: Do you continue, even after setting (The Kids In The Hall) aside, being a fan of the form, of sketch comedy and ensemble work?

DAVE: I still like sketch comedy. As I mentioned, the shows I was into I think were great shows, but honestly I probably haven't watched anything on MTV in a good 10 years

: I can't say I blame you.

DAVE: Any time I turned it on in the last 10 years it was always one of those hideous Real World shows or spring break. It seemed to be spring break every day all year long.

: That's pretty much the same thing you'd see now. So you guys (The Kids) got together a couple of years ago, you did a reunion tour, right?

DAVE: Yeah, we did it in 2000, which was the first time we'd done anything together in five years, and then we did it again in 2003. And actually recently we got together and did an unpublicized show.

: Was that the gig in February (2006)?

DAVE: Yeah.

: Why unpublicized? Wouldn't you want to get the word out?

DAVE: No, we didn't want it to get crazy because the idea was we wanted to get together and write a whole new show, write a show and put it up in a week. So we met and we wrote for three days. We wrote about 90 minutes worth of material, and rehearsed it and put it up that weekend. We did it in a theater that was only like a 200-seat theater. We were just trying to get back to the way we used to work before we had a TV show.

: Like when you hear that a band that has made it big does a surprise club gig or something.

DAVE: Yeah. It was a chance for us to just use the performance as an excuse to write together and just see how stuff worked. It was just a fun thing to do just to see if we could still pull off writing a whole show in a couple of days.

: Do you feel like the experiment was a success?

DAVE: It was, yeah, it was very successful, both creatively and personally. We had a really good time doing it, and at the end of the day we really liked the material we came up with. So we were very happy.

: Any plans to take what you did and move forward with it and see where it goes?

DAVE: We're talking about it. It's hard. We're trying to find time in our schedules. We'd like to do another unannounced show and do that again where we just write for a few days and put it up. We're just having trouble scheduling it right now. And if that happens then I think we'll try to take it out on a tour after that.

: It seems that even now, more than 10 years later, you guys still have a really strong following. Your fans are still really into what you were doing.

DAVE: It's nice. Like I said, doing that (unpublicized) show, part of the reason why we didn't publicize it, because we knew if too many people knew about it, it would get ... cause fans are so great. As it was, the shows were packed and overpacked. Yeah, we're really lucky.

: I gave a call to a buddy to tell him I was doing this interview because he's a longtime fan, and I ended up being on the phone with him for an hour listening to him recount every sketch that he loved from The Kids In The Hall.

DAVE: <laughs> Don't ever call him again.

: <laughs> Yeah, I may put that next call off. I guess that just shows, what you guys did really resonated.

DAVE: I'm glad. We're surprised and delighted. I mean, because when we do go out and do shows, there are people in the audience who are our age and older, and there are still all these people who look like the kids who were coming out during the club days. We must be on our third generation of fans right now.

: That's pretty remarkable. So, I know you have other people waiting, so I'll let you go. What are the chances I can get you to take your latest Kids In The Hall box set, stuff it in your pants and snap a picture?

DAVE: Ummm, I could try. I'd have to find some accommodating pants.