List of The League of Gentlemen Characters - Edward and Tubbs

Edward and Tubbs

Edward Tattsyrup and Tulip "Tubbs" Tattsyrup, played by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton respectively, are a married couple (as well as brother and sister) who are the proprietors of Royston Vasey's local shop (which they inherited from their mother and has apparently been in the Tattsyrup family for generations), located on the top of a hill some distance away from the town. Both have distinctly piggy noses (in live shows, the actors simply hold their noses up with tape). Despite being complete outsiders to most of the other action in the show, they have become, arguably, the most popular and identifiable characters.

Edward, who claims to have served in the armed forces and had been in "a war", has a distrust of outsiders and is likely to emerge from the back of the shop saying "Hello, hello? What's going on? What's all this shouting? We'll have no trouble here!" (regardless of whether or not any shouting is actually going on) and challenge people with the question, "Are you local?", dismissing those who reply "no" with, "This is a local shop, for local people; there's nothing for you here" — one of the show's best-known catch phrases.

Tubbs (real name Tulip), though also scared of newcomers, dreams of visiting the "bright lights" of towns and cities (usually London, said as "Landan"; also places such as Swansea and Chorley), whose existence Edward has tried to keep from her. She tends to ask "Are you local?" with both hope and fear mixed in her voice, but is afraid that visitors may take her "precious things" from the shelves of the shop (in particular, the snow globes on the counter). In general Tubbs has a childlike innocence which only tends to be guided towards malevolent ends by Edward's influence.

Edward and Tubbs have a son, David, who was a mild-mannered civil engineer responsible for building a new road threatening to link Royston Vasey to the outside world; after they reunite at the end of Series 1, his parents keep him locked up in the attic, where he develops a bestial nature. During Series 2 they attempt to kidnap a wife for him; in the end the unwitting victim is Barbara (see below).

The couple are serial killers, responsible for a large number of murders in the area. Some of these occurred when trying to kidnap friends and a wife for David ("be careful, Tubbs...we don't want her to suffocate like the other three"); and with the intention of stopping the building of "New Road"; others seem to be simply for their gratification (for example, they kill a backpacker and subsequently the investigating police officer after Tubbs gives the game away- she yells out "We didn't burn him!").

At the start of Season 3, they are seen to have survived the fire set by the inhabitants of Royston Vasey at the end of Series 2. (They are wrongly suspected of starting the nosebleed epidemic, which is ironic given the countless murders they actually are responsible for.) They decide to follow "New Road" and contemplate beginning a new life with a new shop in London. Edward's glasses were broken in the fire leaving him unable to see properly, so Tubbs, using one of the snow globes as a map, leads them along a railway line, and they are both promptly killed by a speeding train.

In the final shot of Season 3 we see a brief glimpse of their grandchildren in Barbara's arms; they have the same pig noses as Edward and Tubbs.

The pair go on to appear in the live show as their ghosts, although this is set in a continuity outside of the main series, much like the film, where they appear briefly and accidentally kill Jeremy Dyson.

The couple's piggy noses may have something to do with the family's bestiality towards pigs meaning that the reason for their strange noses are genetic. This is implied in the second episode of the first series where Tubbs is shown breast-feeding a piglet. The noses, and Edward's appearance in particular, may also be indicative of congenital syphilis. Another thing to note is their ages. While the Series 1 DVD biographies state that Edward is 84 years old and Tubbs is 33 (also throwing doubt on their mother's age based on the decades between their conceptions) the audio commentaries for the series note a time in the 16th century when Tubbs betrayed Edward and that the couple got married in the 14th century making them both over 700 years old.