Richard Herring: Oh F**k I’m 40

COMEDY

By CHRISTOPHER COLLETT - Monday, August 13, 2007

Richard Herring

When you've spent your entire career defining yourself as 'a puppyish, puerile, eternal teenager', as Richard Herring has, then turning 40 presents something of an identity crisis. The only solution, it seems, is to write a show about how big a loser you are.

Luckily, for Herring, his sad eyes and gooey midriff make him perfectly suited to the comedy of self-deprecation and he wastes no time alchemising his own misery into comedy gold. Still single and childless, he paints himself as a pathetic kidult who dresses in tight T-shirts because, if he is going to delude himself he's still 20, he may as well delude himself that he's thin as well.

When he's not mourning his lost youth, he riffs entertainingly about T-shirt slogans, paedophilia and gun control and even throws in a couple of bitingly funny topical gags about Chris Langham and the recently deceased Glasgow airport terrorist who, as a suicide bomber, Herring observes, was a bit of a slow burner.

For the first 45 minutes of the show, Herring is on top form, but he seems to run out of steam in the final quarter, when routines about getting into a fight in Liverpool and receiving a blow job from a stranger seem a bit thin.

Until Aug 26 (not tomorrow), Underbelly (V61), 8.20pm. www.underbelly.co.uk