page_title: Richard Herring
section_title: Solo work
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Herring / Career / Solo work
caption_attribution_description: Richard Herring performing his show Someone Likes Yoghurt at the en:Pleasance Theatre, en:Edinburgh, during the en:2005 en:Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
context_page_description: Richard Keith Herring is an English stand-up comedian, writer and ventriloquist whose early work includes the comedy double act Lee and Herring. He is described by The British Theatre Guide as "one of the leading hidden masters of modern British comedy".
  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 sitcom Time Gentlemen Please, but quickly returned to performance with concept-driven one-person shows like Talking Cock, Hitler Moustache and Christ on a Bike as well as regular circuit stand-up. Herring has created thirteen of these stand-up shows since 2004, performing them for eleven consecutive years 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.
  He is recognised as a pioneer of comedy podcasting, initially with broadcaster Andrew Collins on The Collings and Herrin Podcast and more recently with high-profile comedians such as Simon Pegg, Russell Brand and Stephen Fry on Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast.
context_section_description: Herring has written and performed in thirteen one-person shows, eleven of them consecutively. 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.
  For radio, Herring co-wrote and presented the history based sketch show That Was Then, This Is Now. For television he wrote Al Murray's sitcom Time Gentlemen Please. He also contributed to the third series of Little Britain as script editor.
  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.
  In February 2007, filming began on Herring's comedy-drama You Can Choose Your Friends. As well as writing the script, he also acted alongside Gordon Kennedy, Claire Skinner, Rebecca Front, Sarah-Jane Potts, Robert Daws, Anton Rodgers and Julia McKenzie. The show was broadcast on ITV on 7 June 2007.
  In January 2008 he began the Collings and Herrin (sic) podcast with Andrew Collins. They celebrated their two-year 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.
  Herring's 2008 stand-up set The Headmaster's Son earned four 5-star reviews and several 4-star reviews. 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, 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." The show discusses broader issues, such as fascism and the British National Party. 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.
  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.
  On 27 December 2010, Herring finished second on Celebrity Mastermind with a final score of 34 points. His specialist subject was Rasputin. He was The Pod Delusion "Comedian of the Year 2010" 
  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 and the second in November 2012, winning 'Best DVD' at the 2013 Chortle Awards 
  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". 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.
caption: Richard Herring performing his show Someone Likes Yoghurt at the Pleasance Theatre, during the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe
exif: {}