Review: Richard Herring, The Headmaster's Son ****

Published Date: 20 March 2009

By Sarah Freeman

Richard Herring is on a personal quest to pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong.

At 18 the academically gifted teenager was heading to Oxford University. At 24, along with writing partner Stewart Lee, he was making his radio debut.

Three years later the pair had successfully made the transition to television. By his mid 30s h

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e'd all but disappeared from our screens and was spending most of his time on the lonely comedy circuit entertaining himself with one night stands.

A regular at the Edinburgh Festival, most of his previous shows have been an attempt to explain his character flaws and The Headmaster's Son is no different, attempting to discover whether adulthood angst was the result of his dad teaching at the same school.

Herring acknowledges he wasn't the most popular kid in town. Most days of his own volition he carried a briefcase and a trumpet – a decision he now admits made him the Buckaroo of bullying. There is much to like in this show.

Herring's honesty, his almost contagious Labrador puppy enthusiasm and his ability to tell the crudest jokes without the audience walking out is testament to his all-round likeability.

It's the excerpts from his teenage diaries which provide the show's best material. It takes a brave man to look back at the inner thoughts of his schoolboy self. It takes an even braver man to read them out to a room full of complete strangers for laughs.

Herring, who admits he's often mistaken for Charley Boorman, may no longer be a household name, but he's still a comic treasure.

Hyena Comedy Club, York