Metro 194

I have just recorded the 100th episode of my award winning “Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast”. It’s an incredible milestone for a self-produced piece of entertainment, but one of the advantages of making content for the internet is there are no executives informing me that they’re taking me off the air. I can keep going until everyone stops listening (and even after that if I wish). There’s no censorship, no time limit and no charge.

That’s right. There’s around about 9000 minutes of chat with this country’s finest comedians available to download for FREE. Lord Sugar might fire me if I tried to become his Apprentice with such a ridiculous business plan. But I don’t want people to miss out on this just because they don’t have cash and I hope that those who can afford to pay might buy one of my DVDs or come and see me on tour or buy a badge for a pound (is this show worth 1p an episode? Only you can decide). I don’t quite know how it works, but somehow I am keeping my head above water.

If you head to YouTube or iTunes today you can catch my interview with the amazing Eddie Izzard. Although the show is available in audio and video I think it’s worth watching this one, if only to see Eddie’s incredible stylish outfit. It’s a testament to him that the fact that he sometimes wears skirts and make-up is one of the less remarkable things about him. He is politically engaged, performs his comedy in languages that he has to learn especially and also ran 43 marathons in 51 days after only a month of training.

He has a drive that borders on insanity and I tried my best to get to the heart of what makes him tick. I don’t know if I unlocked any secrets, but it was a delight to listen to his fizzing brain for 75 minutes and to riff with one of my comedy heroes.

Young and hungry comedians who yearn for instant fame and success might be surprised to learn that it took Eddie about a decade and a half to get his big break (and he tells me some funny stories about his years as a street performer). The best comics make it look effortless, but they are like swans. Because only the Queen is allowed to eat them.

Previous guests include Stephen Fry, Stephen Merchant and Louis Theroux (who turns the tables on me and attempts to “Louis Theroux” me to find out about my personal life) and still to come in this series are Jack Whitehall, David Mitchell and a very candid and funny Richard Bacon. Plus interviews with newer comedians who you might not yet have heard of yet.  But who I confidently predict will be big stars.

It’s so much fun to be a part of and I am proud to have created something like this off my own bat. Until I start comparing myself with  Eddie Izzard and realise what a lazy monolingual waster I really am.

 

 

Last week I hosted the Mother and Baby Magazine Awards. It’s still the only awards ceremony in the UK with three distinct awards for breast pumps. Clearly that is not enough breast pump awards, but it’s a start. And it’s three more than BAFTA give.

There is a certain comedy to giving awards to the best double breast pump (you never know when you will need to milk two women at once) or reusable nappy or wet wipe. But of course none of this is funny to the people who make these things. It’s big business.

But if actors can have awards for pretending to be other people and saying stuff someone else has written for them, then by God, the designers of the best wet wipe deserve recognition as well.

At least they have created something that has a genuine purpose. Physics and peace are all well and good but surely the team that invented the most effective nappy rash cream in the world are more deserving of a Nobel prize.