Review: Richard Herring: Hitler Moustache ***

Published Date: 05 February 2010

By Peter Edwards

SPENDING an evening tip-toeing along the dividing line between racism and the satirising of bigotry is a major risk, even when you've been on the stand-up circuit for more than two decades.

Richard Herring just about manages to balance this intellectual high-wire act but it's a close run thing. While there are numerous things in Hitler Moustache that might lead an audience to take offence – and a few to make them spit their drink out wi

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th laughter – Herring's high-pitched liberalism ensures that when he falls off, it's generally on the side of being too earnest, rather than encouraging prejudice.

He's grown a squat, black moustache to try to reclaim it for comedians – not least Charlie Chaplin – and spare it from being forever associated with an evil dictator. As Herring admits, he hasn't entirely succeeded.

What he has done is shoot down the arguments of the BNP and other assorted racists. British identity being diluted by immigration? That's hard when many of us have blood from Vikings, Saxons, Indians and Africans.

Herring has a point – and he makes it provocatively. His take on the antipathy between India and Pakistan uses the language that got Prince Harry in trouble last year, but by repeating that word again and again he tries to destroy its terrible meaning. His shock tactics are well-intentioned but they don't always come off.

The Basement Bar, City Screen, York.