Avoiding a close shave

Comedy Preview: Richard Herring

By DAVID BALDWIN - Friday, August 7, 2009

In a move that could be categorised as either foolhardy or completely insane, stand-up comic Richard Herring is looking to reclaim the Hitler moustache. Reasoning that Charlie Chaplin had one long before Hitler, Herring has spent the past few months wandering around with a small square of bristly hair located beneath his nose, awaiting the barrage of comments sure to come his way.

The results form the basis of his latest Fringe show, Hitler's Moustache. So far, Herring seems to have miraculously avoided the physical violence you might expect for such a brazen choice of facial hair – as his excellent blog explains, 'as long as I am smiling, it doesn't look like it's a Nazi statement of intent; I almost thought I looked handsome with it today'.

Beyond this gimmicky hook, though, Herring is hoping to examine a number of topics, using his moustache as the jumping-off point; whether that be to ask whether fascist liberals are as dangerous as the BNP, or parodying the kind of person who believes that God favours one race over another. In the hands of a lesser comic, this could all be painfully bad, but Herring's solo shows are always a cut above, and not even a Nazi moustache can change that.