Edinburgh Festivals / Richard Herring’s Edinburgh Fringe Podcast: Fringe Review

Comedy Review: Lewis Bremner

Richard Herring’s Edinburgh Fringe Podcast is a live, off-the-cuff daily show filled with stand-up, improvised interviews with comedians, and audience interaction. There are other similar shows at the Festival this year, and many of them are run-of-the-mill; but Herring’s podcast benefits from a number of things.

Firstly, the show takes place in the Stand, which is easily the best comedy venue in Edinburgh, and, according to many comedians and critics, the best in the country. Its host, enjoying his 20th year at the Festival, is effortlessly funny, and an old hand at being both rude and endearing at the same time. And, judging by the comedians who joined Herring this afternoon, the well-received Chris McCausland and Tony Law, the standard of guests is also extremely high.

The consequence is that, although the informal and improvised nature of the show means that there are some lulls in quality and laughs, the hour as a whole is hugely enjoyable, and, by the competition at the end, the atmosphere of fun and good humour in the room is overpowering. You can listen to the unedited and uncensored podcast online at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/richard-herrings-edinburgh/id453503238, but seeing the show recorded live is thoroughly recommended.

Whether the mysteriously bestowed name ‘The King of Edinburgh’, which Herring proudly bears, will catch on more widely is yet to be seen, but his Edinburgh Fringe Podcast will be deservedly popular nonetheless.