It’s just taken
me about thirty seconds to rebook Richard Herring for a date at next year’s
Mostly Comedy (which is nice).
One of the things
that’s great about him is he always gets back to you quickly. It was like this
from the first instance, when we emailed him late one night to see if he might
be available to cover Henning Wehn’s headlining spot the following evening,
after Henning had to pull out last-minute due to illness. We got in contact
with Richard on a whim (we thought he was too big an act for Mostly Comedy) – and
were both amazed and delighted when he emailed back a couple of minutes later
to say he was happy to do it.
I have a lot of
respect for Richard Herring. His work ethic is astounding:
this year saw his tenth consecutive Edinburgh Fringe stand-up show, with
numerous other appearances at the festival since the mid-Nineties. He has also
written a daily blog for the past eleven years; suddenly my seventy-one day
straight run doesn’t seem so impressive.
On top of that he
has his regular Leicester Square Podcast, where he interviews other well-known
acts in front of a live audience – plus various other podcasts, columns and
side-projects, too numerous to mention.
(Rough
translation: “I couldn’t be arsed to look them all up and copy them into this
blog post.”)
He’d certainly
get top marks for commitment to his art.
Back in July of
this year he previewed his latest show, ‘We’re All Going to Die’, at our club –
and before it started, we sat down to interview him for our More Than Mostly
Comedy podcast. It was a daunting prospect, but he made it very easy – and was
happy to tweet the resulting interview about when we finally put it up.
(You can download it for free here if you fancy a listen.)
I shall look
forward to having him back at Hitchin Mostly Comedy in March – and seeing what
new ideas he’s working up at the moment. One thing is for sure: his output is
always as fascinating as it is funny.