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@fred_cov I think Andy may have been up for 10 in a row. Not sure he's done a brand new show every time. (1 hour ago)
@gregoryclark1 usually get a response. Not today. Suspect there may be big problems going on! (1 hour ago)
RT @TheEyeCollector: @Herring1967 Maybe Orange Mark has jaundice. (3 hours ago)
Broadband back working again for now. Have emailed 2 BT bigwigs so hopefully will get some action on this. @btcare (3 hours ago)
It takes a special dedication to bootleg something that is (supposedly) being recorded and distributed for free anyway. (3 hours ago) |
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
COLLIN(G)S AND HERRIN(G):
All the Edinburgh Collings and Herring Podcasts and a book reading of How Not To Grow Up are now up at the usual website or you can subscribe through iTunes.
You can also listen to our 6Music podcast via the 6Music pages or iTunes.
NEW DOWNLOADS/PRESS:
25/08/10 PRESS 5 star review on Chortle
24/08/10 PRESS 5 star review in 3 Weeks and 4 star review in Scotsman.
13/08/10 JOURNALISM Independent diary piece (plus unedited version)
10/08/10 PRESS 4 Star review in Mirror, 3 star review in Independent
T SHIRTS:
Steve Brown and Stephen Newman have designed a range of official Collings and Herrin T shirts which you can purchase from here
And there are also some AIOTM ones Click here.
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Email Richard at:
herring1967@googlemail.com
Material ©2010 Richard Herring
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| History Archive
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1991 - 1996
1991
The first series of On The Hour was broadcast this year. Armando asked us to be involved, based on our subversive work on Weekending. We wrote around about a third of the first series and were certainly instrumental in creating the tone of the piece. But it had a magnificent cast, Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front, Doon Mackichan, Dave Schneider and Patrick Marber and if that wasn't enough Chris Morris fronted it. It went on to become BBC2's The Day Today, but Stew and me were dropped because we wanted to have some ownership over characters and ideas that we had created. I'm not going to go over it all again here. I think it was the best for everyone in the end and I would happily work with any of them (except one, can you guess) again. At the time the money we would have been paid for a 13 minute TV commission would have been extremely welcome, but it was good to have more time eating jacket potatoes and drinking cooking sherry.
I am guessing that 1991 was also the year we recorded the pilot episode of That's Wiggins Yard. It was a radio show written by Lee and Herring, Peter Baynham and Julian Dutton and Andy Parsons and Henry Naylor and I was in it, as was Alistair Macgowan and a bloke who I saw in Brookside the other day. It was mental, set in a location similar to Neal's Yard in London and was semi-topical. I have a tape somewhere, but I don't think you'll ever hear it. It did not get commissioned, but I got my Equity card!
We also wrote a show called "End of the Roadshow" which toured universities and featured Nick Hancock, Neil Mullarkey, Tony Hawkes and Carla Mendonca or Rebecca Front, depending on the episode. Armando contributed gags. God knows what it was like! I only remember one line - "additional material by Armando Ianucci who is diphallactic".
1992
I think it was this year that my solo stand-up career ground to a halt. I did a student gig where I ended up dying and taking off my trousers and decided that that was enough. Despite some success in certain clubs (I remember closing at the Balham Banana and getting an encore) I had found my two year stand up career to be largely humiliating and unsatisfying. I believed that I was not a solo performer. I vowed never to attempt it again.
We did the first series of Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World , the first time we performed on radio. Sarah Smith who produced it (as well as Wiggins and Roadshow) had to really fight Radio 4 bosses to get the series made. I believe she threatened to resign when they decided not to make the series. So many thanks to her for that, because it worked.
I think we made two pilots, the first of which, for some reason, was partly a parody of "The Word" where we were playing characters, one of whom was called Barry Crustings.
We did two series and the show featured us, Armando and Rebecca Front with Tom Baker top and tailing the show as the mysterious Lionel Nimrod.
I made my first return to Edinburgh for four years to appear in a sketch show called "the dum show". The cast was me, Stew, Simon Munnery, Patrick Marber and Steve Coogan. My God, it should have been brilliant. But we argued a lot about what should go in and who should play what (I think Patrick thought he should play everything!) At a time when my confidence in performing was very low, Patrick's criticism of my acting was very depressing. I really thought the show could have worked and we'd written some great sketches (including one about a club for people called Ian) but we all essentially gave up on it and Stew (particularly) fell out with Patrick.
Late in the run a TV producer came and was keen to make it into a TV show. Suddenly Patrick decided the show was a great idea. But it was too late. Coogan won the Perrier with his other show, directed by Marber. Patrick got all the things he wanted.
I think we also wrote for Stab in the Dark, this year. It was a Channel 4 opinion-based series featuring David Baddiel, Tracey Macleod and Michael Gove. We only wrote for and with Tracey. She was a great laugh, although I never really got into the flow with this series and Stew did most of the work. When Tracey found out that I got really wound-up by the sound of polystyrene rubbing against polystyrene she once hid behind a car with some polystyrene and jumped out at me rubbing it. Not the serious Newsnight style presenter that I had expected.
1993
At Edinburgh we did a stage version of Nimrod, off the back of the second series. Rebecca and Armando couldn't do it, so we brought in the future dream team of Ronnie Ancona and Alistair Macgowan. I remember them particularly as the vampires who later appeared on Fist of Fun.
I also did Ra-Ra-Rasputin which was the life story of Rasputin set to the music of Boney M (years before Mama Mia or We Will Rock You) I lost weight and learned to dance in order to play the character. The show also featured Andrew Mackay who is the Prof from Time Gentlemen Please, Sally Phillips from Smack the Pony, Ben Moor and Clare de Vries (who wrote a book about going round America with her cat, I think). It was a crazy show, with complicated dancing on the tiniest of stages. Though hardly anyone who saw it, hundreds of people have told me how great it was. William Cook from the Guardian was a big fan of it. Unfortunately the rest of the Perrier committee that year thought it was shit, so nothing ever became of it.
In Edinburgh that year we also recorded the first episode in the radio series of Fist of Fun. Subsequent episodes were recorded at colleges round the country and Dale Winton was a guest, just before he really became big!
It was round about now that we wrote for a Radio 4 pilot called "Bob Says Who?" which was a whacky quiz format, hosted by Bob Mortimer. It never got made, but wasn't a million miles away from Shooting Stars. Not saying it was our idea, it was very much Bob's style, but interesting.
I also appeared in two short series of the Armando Iannucci show on Radio 1. The second series was in 94.
1994
I'm pretty sure we recorded the TV pilot of Fist of Fun this year.
We did the first series of our Radio 1, live, Lee and Herring shows which were tremendous fun.
At Edinburgh I did a show called Richard Herring is Fat, about how I'd put on two stone in the previous twelve months. You can read the script here. It also featured Sally Phillips and Kevin Eldon. We appeared with some good people, hey!
I also did a show (with Stew most days plus guests) called This Morning With Richard, Not Judy. It was a shambolic chat show with sketches and turns, where tickets were auctioned in the Pleasance courtyard and went for as little as 1p and as much as £40 depending on demand. Because there was no publicity for the show I was able to spend money on fabulous prizes to give away to the audience. I spent £350 on a second hand car which was won by a bemused student (who already owned exactly the same model of car) Despite this profligacy I still made money on the show (the only time this has happened in Edinburgh). Don't tell the tax man but the drawer by my bed was full of cash all Edinburgh long.
I probably wrote the first draft of my never made sit-com Sex Amongst the Stalagmites this year. You can read a later draft of it here. I could do better if I was to try again now, but there's clearly something in it.
I did a radio show about a visit to Cadbury's Chocolate Factory. There's an early draft of the script of that here.
1995
We did two more series of the radio Lee and Herring show, with a series of compilations coming the following year.
This was the year of the broadcast of the first TV series of Fist of Fun. Many happy memories of that. It isn't available of video anywhere (legally), and it's a shame there isn't a DVD because we recorded about another 3 or 4 shows worth of material. I am sure that has all ended up in a bin somewhere, which is a shame because I'd love to see it again.
In Edinburgh that year we did a double act show, I think in the big venue at the Pleasance, which we even filled a couple of times.
I also did another one man show with other people in it, called Richard Herring is All Man. Click here for the programme and here for the script. Sally Phillips was in it again, as was Tom Binns, who memorably turned up late for one show and someone had to do his lines from backstage. We just about got away with it. Click here to read the short story I wrote which was inspiration for this show. It was for a competition of some kind, but I didn't win.
We also recorded our live video at the Cochrane Theatre in London. As predicted this quickly appeared in bargain bins all over the country. We also wrote a Fist of Fun book, which we worked very hard on and which the BBC completely failed to market. It's a shame because it was very high quality for a cash in book. They also brought out a tape and CD of our radio show. Again it was quite good, but again didn't seem to get put in shops, until about the year 2000 when it was sold for a pound in bargain bookshops. There is no other Lee and Herring merchandise, so don't ask!
I think I also did a pilot, this year (maybe last) for a radio show, about being a man called Richard Herring's Manhood. I did record some stuff because I remember meeting the National Conker Champion, but it was not made into a series. Here's a bit of the script of that pilot episode anyway.
1996
We did a second series of Fist of Fun, but were forced to make changes (which Stew resisted more than me, but he was right to) We lost the messy studio and were put in gilded chairs. It wasn't really right and they gave us the series so late that it was a real rush to get the scripts done in time. There was some good things in it, most memorably the false Rod Hull and a giant moon on a stick, but I much preferred the feel of the first series. As so often happens with us, the controller of the channel changed and the new man in charge did not want to re-commission a show made by his predecessor. It looked as if it all might be over.
That Edinburgh we did another double act show. I also wrote my first play, called Punk's Not Dead, about a group of friends who meet up to go and see the Sex Pistols reunion show. I was in it, along with Ewan Bailey (who recently played a man hiring a prostitute on Eastenders), Paul Reynolds (from Press Gang), Paul Putner (Curious Orange) and Jason Freeman (Steve from TGP). It was directed by Jeremy Herrin who has directed most of my solo projects since then and who I partly employed because he nearly has the same name as me. You can read the script here. It was pretty well reviewed and received well by the public. Some reviewers claimed I had simply put chunks of my stand-up into the play, but as you have seen I no longer did stand-up. All the stuff was especially written for the play and if you are clever you will notice it all fits into the themes of the play. I think some theatre reviewers have a problem with plays being too funny, as if that's a bad thing. Cheeky Alan Supple who is mentioned in the play is named after an old flat-mate from college and went on to appear in TGP. He is based on a real-life bald comedian (not Harry Hill) who behaved atrociously to the crew of a show he was working on that year and got a friend of mine sacked.
I also met Nick Owen from morning telly and he expressed interest in taking part in a Sunday morning show I had dreamt up, based on This Morning with Richard, Not Judy. Here's the treatment. If it had gone ahead things could have been very different!
I think Stew and me also did a tour this year.
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