Herring Similar Face Confusion

I was just looking at my post from last December and realized that my fat face was remarkably similar to that of Richard Herrings famous face in the image that Amanda took. Spooky!!

Anyone for Puttocks? - Collings & Herrin, Duke of Yorks, Brighton

Went to see Andrew Collins and Richard Herrings filth filled live podcast last night at the Duke of Yorks cinema in Brighton.  It was really good.  Although there was a strange element in the audience that gave the impression they had just walked in off the street expecting to see something else.  You would think that, having listened to almost 100 hours of these two men talking nonsense, swearing and being amusing, they would know more exactly what to expect than at any live event they would ever pay to see; but apparently not. The audience was "flighty" but under control and the podcast was, i think, a very different beast from any that has gone before.  As well as the odd audience, Rich seemed a tiny bit merry which added a sense of crackling potential to the evening. It may have been mah favourite one ever.

I'm not usually a person who is a professional "fan" of anything, but I love the Collings and Herrin podcast, as do many other thirty-something men judging by the mostly bearded and balding audience.  I had hastily made a childish t shirt with the obscure mantra, "Anyone for Puttocks?" written on it, like a big twat.  Not wanting my one hours worth of effort and the pound I paid for the fabric pen, to go to waste I managed to meet my idols after the festivities were over.  They were both very nice and didn't look in the least bit irritated to indulge yet another grown man that should know better.  I didn't want to buy any merchandise, but gave them 5 pounds for either A) a Marks and Spencer sandwich/salad and a drink or B) 5 litres of rice/oat milk.  Amanda took the above picture for prosperity. I was very proud of the picture until my sister pointed out that it looks like a fully grown adult man, grinning like an idiot, wearing a meaningless homemade t shirt, in between two other anonymous adult men.  34 years old I was.

Richard Herring and his Hitler Moustache, Brighton

Saw Richard Herring's live show, Hitler Moustache, last night at Upstairs at the Three and Ten in Kemptown. It was an Edinburgh warm up show. I'm not a natural gig goer. Although i love stand up i find the potential for prolonged, embarrassing silences and performer humiliation way too much to bear. I'm the sort of person that has to say something, anything, to fill a void left in an stilted conversation. For me the thought of someone on a stage, being shit, in a silent room full of dispirited faces, is a vision of hell. This is why i will never go and see Rhod Gilbert (ho ho). This is also why i have never understood hecklers. To be a heckler you'd have to have a powerful combination of a staggering lack of empathy, a redundancy of compassion and leonine like confidence in your own betterness than the poor person who is attempting to entertain you. My sister told me about a time she went to see one of my favourite comedians, Simon Day at the notorious stand up hell that is Bangor university student union. Like so many comedians before him, I've heard, he died horribly and at one point said the terrible words, "I'm really sorry about this" to the tiny unamused audience. Those words, and the image of noble Simon Day, suffering in unwanted silence, have stuck with me ever since. The awk would have been incredible.

According to the Brighton Argus the Hitler Moustache set would at points make me "genuinely laugh-out-loud". This made me slightly less nervous. I would have been sorely disappointed if i went to a stand up gig and the comedian only managed to produce jokes that made me laugh internally; or, in fact, jokes that only made me pretend to laugh out loud. That wouldn't be very entertaining at all. We arrived at the venue half an hour early and had the usual gallon of wine. Then, at 8pm, made our way upstairs to the tiny room with its tiny stage. My first instinct was to sit at the back of the room, out of sight. If Richard was shit and a disappointment, i could feel sorry for him in the shadows. Amanda was up for sitting towards the back as well as she has a morbid fear of being dragged up on stage to "participate"; a hang over from too many South African childhood pantomimes perhaps? We were already hovering over the safely hidden seats when the mischievous Gods of conflict avoidance challenged me to be a better man, as they have so many times before, by presenting us with two seats directly in front of the mouse like stage. Amazingly, my love of Herring won out and we threw awk to the wind and advanced to the front.

The gig was great, i didn't feel at all awkward and was very pleased to have taken the chance and not settled for the easy option, as i would have normally. A small victory. Herring was very good making me genuinely laugh out loud pretty much all the way through. Although i do admit to falsely laughing out loud on one occasion. At one point he even singled us out, saying i looked like a bit like David Brent with my "combination of every beard style known to man" face . He also indicated that Amanda should be as creative with her ladygarden as she is on the allotment. When he left the stage i was excited to see an enormous and truly terrifying red/yellow puss mark on his back, a remnant of a recently exploded cyst. Lovely. A grand night.

Collings and Herrin - Derek and Clive?

I am pretty much obsessed with Richard Herring, For those imaginary readers that don't know who he is, he is a comedian that had moderate success in the 90's as part of the duo, Lee (as in Stuart Lee) and Herring, If you count moderate success as getting a TV show on the telly, and is now in a loose double act with Andrew Collins of the much missed radio/late night ITV partnership, Collins & Maconie.

Now, even though I really really liked the studenty Fist of Fun, the first thing Lee & Herring got on TV, I always thought that TMWRNJ, their sophomore effort I suppose, was 30 percent funny and 70 percent rushed. But what do I know. I still patiently watched every episode waiting for the jokes.

I always thought Lee and Herring were at their funniest when simply bouncing jokes off each other; with Herring playing the role of naive Somerset virgin and Lee the equally absurd worldly London trendy. Watching these episodes back now it is quite something to think that Stuart Lee went on to have the more successful post Lee & Herring career. Herring does pretty much all the leg work in the double act and is a great comic actor. His whale milk drinking, rat shagging character is really really funny. These early personas have stood both comedians in good stead, with Lee in particular carving out a very good career as 'Britain's most highly regarded stand-up comedian' (official) and a master of ball achingly knowing irony; and Herring playing the eternal, winky obsessed, 'kidult'.

Herring has been writing a daily blog, daily, for as long as I’ve been a user of the internet. I am probably one of his more recent converts, having only been reading it for a couple of years. His musings are always interesting, even when they are about poker, and are sometimes very funny. It's a real achievement that he has managed to keep the quality of his blog posts so consistently high for so long. I don’t think he has missed a day. Reading his blog is one of my great little pleasures. It's a bit like getting a comedy pamphlet delivered straight to your door every morning for free. More recently Herring has teamed up with journalist, recent radio outcast, film twerp and all round nice guy, Andrew Collins to record a weekly podcast. I have admired Collins since i was a teenager because, as he worked at the NME, I thought he must have been one of the coolest men in the world. I have since discovered that this was probably not the case.

The podcast is sometimes jaw droppingly rude and bold in a way that just would not be possible in any other medium. Just as Derek and Clive first found infamy on bootlegged cassettes, passed surreptitiously between those in the know, most notably Led Zeppelins, listening to the Collings and Herrin podcast frequently feel likes you are bearing witness to something really unique. For myself, whose comedy year zero was The Young Ones and Rik Mayall pretend farting into a microphone at the first Comic Relief event, it feels brilliantly naughty to hear some of the things that Collins & Herring, or rather their alter egos Collings and Herrin, see fit to say. Collins takes on the role of naive nice guy to Herring's vicious misanthrope and some of the off the cuff material they produce is of simply awesome quality.

My only problem with the podcast is their complete lack of self knowledge about which episodes are good and which are boring. As far as I can judge the quality varies by about 2 percentage points either way. One week there may be slightly too much dead air, but an off hand comment about Collings being bummed by a mouse whilst at Glastonbury, or offering his ball point pen to a tourist and perhaps being mistaken for a toilet trader can tip the balance either way. Anyway, enough of my yackin, Listen to my clip above that i made myself from a bit of episode 68, and then go and listen to the other 70 episodes.