Richard Keith Herring (born 12 July 1967)[1] is an English stand-up comedian and writer whose early work includes the comedy double actLee and Herring (alongside Stewart Lee). He is described by The British Theatre Guide as "one of the leading hidden masters of modern British comedy".[2]
Towards the end of the double act, Herring also worked as a writer, producing four plays. After Lee and Herring went their separate ways he co-wrote the sitcomTime Gentlemen Please, but quickly returned to performance with concept-drivenone-person shows like Talking Cock, Hitler Moustache and Christ on a Bike as well as regular circuit stand-up. Herring has created fourteen of these stand-up shows since 2001, performing them for eleven consecutive years from 2004 to 2014 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with annual tours and a final performance recorded for DVD. His 2016–17 show was a 'best of' tour, drawing from these shows.[3]
Richard Herring was born in Pocklington, East Riding of Yorkshire, and grew up in Cheddar, Somerset.[9] He is the youngest of three children.[10] He attended The Kings of Wessex School, where his father was the headmaster and maths teacher. This later formed the basis of his 2008 stand-up show, The Headmaster's Son. Herring’s mother was also a teacher.[10] The 2007 ITV comedy drama You Can Choose Your Friends, which he wrote and also starred in, was based on his family.[10] Some of the same characters later featured in the Radio 4 series "Relativity".
Between 1992 and 2000, Richard was half of the stand-up comedy double act with Stewart Lee. Their television work included Fist of Fun, Festival of Fun, and This Morning With Richard Not Judy, and they had been collaborating on stage and radio projects since the 1980s.
Herring has written and performed in fourteen one-person shows, eleven of them in consecutive years. A Herring show typically starts with a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, continues with an extensive UK tour and ends with a recorded performance for DVD.
In 2005, he presented a chat show called Heads Up with Richard Herring on the Pokerzone channel, in which he interviewed professional poker players and celebrities about their careers and their love of the game. There were 10 episodes in total.[14]
Performing at the Kings Head pub in Crouch End, London
In January 2008 he began the Collings and Herrin (sic) podcast with Andrew Collins. They celebrated their second anniversary with a live "100th" podcast (it was actually the 105th recording) at the Leicester Square Theatre. On 30 January 2010 the pair began a tenure of sitting in for Adam and Joe on BBC Radio 6 Music on Saturdays mornings, a slot they occupied for more than a year.[16]
Herring's 2008 stand-up set The Headmaster's Son earned four 5-star reviews and several 4-star reviews.[17][18][19] The set covers his experience growing up in The Kings of Wessex School in Somerset where his father worked as headmaster and how this may have been the origin of his fondness for telling puerile jokes. The show was seen by critics as a thoughtful look at his upbringing,[2] and his relationship with his father, to whom the show is dedicated.
Herring launched his show, Hitler Moustache in 2009 to see if he "could reclaim the toothbrush moustache for comedy – it was Chaplin's first, then Hitler ruined it."[20] The show discusses broader issues, such as fascism and the British National Party.[21] Herring and some of his contemporaries, including Dave Gorman, were angered when material from his show was misrepresented in a Guardian column by critic Brian Logan.[22][20][21][23]
On 14 October 2010, his Radio 4 series Richard Herring's Objective was first broadcast. Here Herring attempts to reclaim controversial items, starting with the toothbrush moustache and moving onto the hoodie, Flag of England and Dolly the Sheep. An Edinburgh special about the See-you-Jimmy hat was broadcast in August 2011 and a second series was recorded in October 2011 with episodes about the golliwog, the wheelchair, Page 3 and the old school tie.[24]
On 27 December 2010, Herring finished second on Celebrity Mastermind with a final score of 34 points. His specialist subject was Rasputin.[25] He was The Pod Delusion "Comedian of the Year 2010."[26]
In May 2011 it was announced that Fist of Fun would be released on DVD by Go Faster Stripe. The first series was released in December 2011[27] and the second in November 2012,[28] winning 'Best DVD' at the 2013 Chortle Awards[29]
In August and September 2015, he performed all 11 of his previous one man shows, plus a new one, Happy Now?, at the Leicester Square Theatre over the course of six weekends in a season called "The Twelve Shows of Herring".[30]Happy Now? was taken on a 50-plus date UK tour between October 2015 and June 2016. His 2017 tour show was called Richard Herring — The Best. His 2017 Edinburgh Fringe show is called "Oh Frig, I'm 50!" This was taken on a UK tour in the Spring of 2018.
In 2020, Herring was a contestant on the tenth series of Taskmaster.[31] He was the series' eventual winner. Herring later returned to compete against fellow winners Ed Gamble, Kerry Godliman, Liza Tarbuck and Lou Sanders for the second "Champion of Champions" special, which he also won.
In May 2024 he began a tour of a new stand up show, 'Can I Have My Ball Back?' based on his experience of testicular cancer.[32]
Blogs, podcasts and internet
On 25 November 2002 Herring started his blog, Warming Up, as a way to overcome writer's block.[33] He has written an entry for every day, and has over 7,000 consecutive entries. His regular readership is estimated to be around 3,000. Some ideas recorded in Warming Up have been used in his live shows. The first year of his blog is collected in two books, Bye Bye Balham and The Box Lady and Other Pesticles.
On 12 October 2009, Herring recorded the first episode of As It Occurs To Me, a weekly radio-style stand-up and sketch show made for the Internet. It stars himself alongside Emma Kennedy, Dan Tetsell and Christian Reilly. It currently stands at 18 episodes and 5 bonus mini-episodes. It was nominated for best internet show at the 2010 Sony Awards, though it failed to place. On 7 February 2011, As It Occurs to Me won the first Chortle Internet award[34] On 20 March 2012 he retained it.[35] In 2017, As It Occurs To Me returned as a six-episode web series.
In 2011, Herring began playing himself at snooker for an audio podcast called "Me1 vs Me2 Snooker". On 28 July 2016 he performed at the Tempting Failure extreme art festival[36] In 2020 he started playing this with 32 personas on Twitch and appeared on Comedians: Home Alone on BBC2 in July with an edited frame of Me1 vs Me2.[37]
On 17 November 2013, he recorded the first episode of a six-part internet stand-up, sketch and interview show Richard Herring's Meaning of Life, structured around the philosophical concepts of 'Creation', 'the Paranormal', 'Love', 'Death', 'Good & Evil' and 'the Shape of Things To Come',[45][46][47] the episode being broadcast online between February 2014 and early 2015.
In February 2014, the first Richard Herring Show was broadcast on Fubar Radio.[48] Herring presented this with comedian Lou Sanders weekly, before quitting the show together; their final episode was broadcast on 24 May 2014.
On 8 March 2018, in aid of International Women’s Day, Herring raised over £150,000 for domestic abuse charity Refuge by responding to anyone on Twitter who asked when International Men's Day was (it is 19 November).[49][50] He did the same on 8 March 2019, raising almost £130,000.[51] He repeated the exercise on 8 March 2020 and streamed himself responding to tweets live on Twitch. He raised a further £70,000.[52] In 2020 he wrote a book about his experiences and toxic masculinity called The Problem With Men which was published on 5 November.[53]
In March 2020 Herring started streaming regularly on Twitch as the world went into lockdown. He produced weekly remote episodes of his podcast, Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, did a live feed of Stone Clearing most weekday mornings and played himself at snooker (with 32 personas) in the evening. He also did occasional non-director's commentaries for films, as well as a newspaper review with his 128-year-old ventriloquist dummy called Ally and Herring's Twitch of Fun.[54][55]
In June 2023, Herring announced he would be touring Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast around the UK starting September 2023.[56]
Misspelling words for comic effect, most commonly by adding a superfluous 's' (as in 'John Majors') or 'g' (as in 'skellington').[57]
Recurrence of the name Ian for characters, especially as a stand-in name for the imagined director of a company (as in 'Ian Starbucks').
Unlikely acronyms (as in tmwrnj for This Morning With Richard Not Judy) and complex, self-defeating mnemonics (as in abia-ibja-jbjah-baj-bpa zot-apbea-ebaaa-baaa-bnanb-sasb-bora-bboora-obja-jbdt-kadt-kbsoh-thbtwo-uas-bra-rbaaa-baaa-bjaj bjaj-boa-obja-jbaaa-bea-ebmam-baaa-bja-jbjah-batt-twcat-baatwb-tbjbs-asbzaz-baaa-beaebaaabs-as-baaa-beaebea-ebmam-jaj-bj-thomow-wbj-wicc for the genealogy of Christ).
Suggesting ruinous philistine improvements to classic works, including "extra final scenes" for Thelma and Louise and Titanic or that a well-received film would be better "with a Shrek in it".
Herring was formerly in a relationship with the actress Julia Sawalha,[111] some years after joking on Fist of Fun that "My ideal woman has the head of Julia Sawalha and the body of Julia Sawalha."
In April 2012, Herring married author and comedian Catie Wilkins.[115] They had their first child, a daughter, in February 2015, followed by a son in October 2017.[116]
Herring has raised money for Scope since 2003, and ran the London Marathon in aid of the charity in 2004[117][118] as well as the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon in 2011, 2013 and 2014.[119] In January 2011 he was nominated for a Just Giving Life Time Achievement Award for his extensive work in helping to raise money, awareness and support for Scope.[120] In 2012 he was made a Patron of Scope.[121]
In 2010 he was made a patron of Humanists UK (formerly The British Humanist Association)[122] and said:
"It’s the 21st century and it’s time the human race accepted that we’re flying this plane and no one out there is going to save us from crashing it. So let’s work together, hey?"[123]
In February 2021 he had an orchidectomy to remove a cancerous testicle, undergoing one shot of chemotherapy a month later.[124] In November 2021 he ran the Hertfordshire Half Marathon and raised £30,000 for the hospitals that treated his condition.[125] His book about the experience Can I Have My Ball Back? was published in October 2022. In April 2022 it was announced that Herring had become an Ambassador for Movember.[126]
Collections
The University of Kent holds material relating to Herring's career as part of the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive.[127][128] The Richard Herring Collection contains performance scripts, promotional items, published material, and digital documents and scans.[128]
Lee and Herring were a British standup comedy double act consisting of the comedians Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. They were most famous for their work on television, most notably Fist of Fun and This Morning with Richard Not Judy but had been working together on stage and on radio since the late 1980s.
Tony Law is a Canadian stand-up comedian. Originally from Lacombe, Alberta, he has been based in London, United Kingdom since the age of 19.
Danielle Claire Ward is a British stand-up comedian and writer.
Brian Limond, known as Limmy, is a Scottish comedian, author, and Twitch streamer.
Sarah Jane Millican is an English comedian. Millican won the comedy award for Best Newcomer at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In February 2013 she was listed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Radio 4's Woman's Hour, and in the same year she married fellow comedian Gary Delaney. Her first book, How to Be Champion, was published in 2017.
Richard Ian Boldsworth, previously known by the stage name Ray Peacock, is an English comic performer, best known for The ParaPod, The Peacock and Gamble Podcast and The Ray Peacock Podcast. He came to prominence in the Big and Daft comedy trio.
Michael James Wozniak is a British comedian, writer, actor and former medical doctor. He portrays Brian in the Channel 4 sitcom Man Down and is a member of the team that makes Small Scenes for BBC Radio 4.
John David Finnemore is a British comedy writer and actor. He wrote and performed in the radio series Cabin Pressure, John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, and John Finnemore's Double Acts, and frequently features in other BBC Radio 4 comedy shows such as The Now Show. Finnemore has won more Comedy.co.uk awards than any other writer, and two of his shows appear in the top ten of the Radio Times' list of greatest ever radio comedies.
London Hughes is a British comedian, television writer and presenter. She wrote and starred in Laughter Shock, a comedy for the BBC which piloted in 2010.
Katie Cariad Lloyd is a British comedian, actress, writer, and podcaster. She is a member of the improvisational comedy group Austentatious, the host and creator of Griefcast, and an improv teacher.
Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast ) and Richard Herring's Edinburgh Fringe Podcast are two related comedy podcasts, created and hosted by British comedian Richard Herring. Hosted on The British Comedy Guide, the podcasts are interviews with notable guests, usually fellow comedians. The original Edinburgh Fringe podcast ran from 2011 to 2013, and took place most days for the duration of the Fringe, focusing on interviews with performers at the festival. They also contain short stand-up segments from Fringe performers. The Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, recorded at Leicester Square in London, began in 2012 and follows a similar format, with higher profile guests. It runs for a shorter series than the Edinburgh Fringe version, with weekly recordings.
John Michael David Robins is an English stand-up comedian and radio presenter.
Nishant Kumar is a British stand-up comedian, television presenter, and podcast host. He became known as the host of satirical comedy The Mash Report, now known as Late Night Mash. He has also presented BBC Radio 4 Extra's topical comedy show Newsjack, the Comedy Central series Joel & Nish vs The World, the BBC Radio 4 programme The News Quiz and Hello America on Quibi. Since May 2023, he has been the co-host of the political podcast Pod Save the UK.
Lucy Ann Beaumont is a British comedian from Hull. Her early performances were based largely on anecdotes about Hull and the wider Northern England region. She was a finalist on So You Think You're Funny in 2011 and won the BBC Radio New Comedy Awards in 2012. Her 2014 debut show at the Edinburgh Fringe, We Can Twerk It Out, was nominated for that year's Best Newcomer Award.
Rachel Sarah Parris is an English comedian, musician, actress and presenter. She hosts the satirical news show Late Night Mash.
Mark Olver is an English stand-up comedian from Bristol. He specialises as a compere and a warm-up act for television shows.
Jamie Demetriou is an English comedian, actor and screenwriter. He is best known for his role as Bus Rodent in Fleabag and for creating, co-writing, and starring in Stath Lets Flats. For the latter, he won Best Male Actor in a Comedy, Best Writer of a Comedy, and Best Scripted Comedy at the 2020 BAFTA Awards.
Catherine Bohart is an Irish stand-up comedian, writer and actor based in the United Kingdom.
Laura Lexx is an English comedian and writer originally from Somerset.
Anthony Irvine, also known as the Iceman and aim, is a British performance artist and visual artist.
↑ Herring’s appearance at Edinburgh in 1995 was the backdrop for a short film by Martin Pickles. 'Fisted: the hunt for Richard Herring', 1996. This comedy is not really about Herring but his recent stardom with Stewart Lee forms the comic device. Pickles was at Oxford with Herring. G.M. Film The soundtrack by Evangelista is produced by band member and fellow comedian Al Murray.
↑ "Richard Herring Collection". Special Collections and Archives - University of Kent. 6 December 2021. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
1 2 University of Kent Special Collections & Archives. "Richard Herring Collection". University of Kent Special Collections & Archives Catalogue. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
