Richard Herring: Hitler’s Moustache, Upstairs At Three And Ten, Brighton, June 30

Wednesday 1st July 2009

By Duncan Hall »

“It's funny how you get more right-wing as you get older,” said Richard Herring as he stepped on to the Three And Ten stage sporting a carefully clipped Hitler moustache.

This new show, the follow-up to his autobiographical confessional The Headmaster’s Son, sees Herring confront racism head-on, with comic results.

By sporting his new facial hair, he hopes to reclaim the distinctive toothbrush moustache for comedy, to associate it more with Charlie Chaplin than Adolf Hitler.

As a comedy prop which could be attached to its owner for the best part of the year, it is going to provide Herring with a pile of material.

Only a few weeks in, as he prepares for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he already has sports commentator Jim Rosenthal’s reaction to it and there is bound to be more to come.

With his ’tache as a springboard, he was able to launch an intelligent attack on Nick Griffin and the BNP, while also “proving” the racist’s world view isn’t a million miles from what the liberals are trying to achieve.

He explored the evil side his new distinguishing feature gave him, including genuinely laugh-out-loud funny cracks about the media coverage of missing toddler Madeleine McCann and the death of Michael Jackson.

As Herring is first to admit, this show will be an interesting comic experiment – if only to see whether the Hitler moustache will return as a fashionable addition to the upper lip among his Edinburgh audiences.

Judging by this early show, it could be an unmissable ticket.