1 - Who are you and where are you? I am Richard Herring and I am in Caffe Nero pretending to work. Unless this is more of an existential question than I am taking it for, in which case, good questions. Who am I and where am I? Woooh! Deep.
2 - What is You Can Choose Your Friends?
YCCYF (as all the cool kids are calling it) is a 90 minute comedy drama that I have written for ITV. ItÂ’s about a family reunion for a 45th wedding anniversary and deals with family tensions and generational differences. It has an incredible cast including Anton Rodgers, Julia Mackenzie, Claire Skinner, Rebecca Front, Robert Daws, Sarah-Jane Potts and Gordon Kennedy. I am also in it, trying to keep my head down so no-one will realise that I donÂ’t deserve to be amongst such acting talent. You see my bum in it. DonÂ’t know if that will encourage or discourage, but itÂ’s best to be honest at this stage.
3 - Does the show have an interesting history?
It depends on your definition of interesting. It has taken a short while to get to the form it is presently in, starting as a 30 minute sit-com script for the BBC, which I laboured over for a year or so. The BBC ummed and ahhed a bit and wanted me to write a second episode, but then Paul Jackson from ITV read it, said he thought it would be better as a 90 minute drama (which is what I had always thought) and commissioned it. I think he was right and he seems very pleased with the way it has turned out, but now it all depends on how it performs with the ITV viewers. 7th June at 9pm everyone. No flipping!
4 - How did it feel to be beaten by hecklerspray in the Metro Blog Awards?
Not as bad as it felt being beaten by the one for the band who were mates with the judge. ThereÂ’s a part of me that quite enjoys my lack of recognition in my 18 year career so it would have been a shame to win. There is another part of me though that craves these kind of transitory baubles and would see them as vindicating my existence. So that part of me hates hecklerspray with all its part of my heart. But given I didnÂ’t come second I still wouldnÂ’t have won. And the hecklerspray team seem to be very polite young men who know that I am best than them, so I am pleased for them. It is probably the best thing that will ever happen to them in their lives, so I canÂ’t envy them too much. Plus I won a Gamesmaster Golden Joystick once. Which is better.
5 - If you saw Alan McGee in the street right now, what would you say to him?
”Why didn’t you make me win, you twat. My blog is obviously the best? Didn’t you read it? And can we become mates so that there is a chance I might come in the top two next year?”
6 - You turn 40 soon and you're writing an Edinburgh show about it. What kind of themes are you going to touch upon in it?
I have not written anything yet, so canÂ’t be sure. But I think it will be about looking backwards and forwards. I have come up with this idea that getting to 40 is like getting to the top of a tall mountain that youÂ’ve been climbing all your life. When you get there you can look back at the golden pastures that you have left behind you and look forward to the grey and icy wasteland that awaits you. Suddenly you realise that you should have enjoyed the up side of the mountain a bit more, but itÂ’s too late. YouÂ’re not allowed back the way you came and are now on a rapid toboggan ride to death.
Other themes will no doubt be my mid-life crisis, my failure to have procreated, the way that I still feel that I am 25 and how the mirror mocks me over this issue, how it is hard to cope as a man who has made my living by being childish with suddenly having to face up to the fact I am old.
It will be all these things. Only funny.
7 - Why should we all go to the Cumberland Pencil Museum?
You get a free pencil. And plus find out a lot about pencils. Probably more than you wanted to know about pencils if I am honest. But itÂ’s in Keswick which is a beautiful part of the world, so even if you donÂ’t like pencils you can always go outside and breathe the fresh air and look at the lake. ItÂ’s also got the biggest working pencil in the world, which is about twenty feet long, which I would argue is impractically big.
8 - In your blog (the one that Alan McGee thinks is less good than hecklerspray) you sometimes paint a fairly downbeat picture of being a touring comedian. Can it really get that bleak?
I love my job – most of the time – and it’s much better than having to work for a living. But I think people imagine it’s all fun and wild parties and drugs and sex with groupies. I admit that this is the main reason I thought I’d get into it. But it’s only like that about 97% of the time. And the other 3% of my life is very sad and lonely.
In all seriousness it is a little hard to cope with the difference between the adulation you get on stage, making hundreds of people laugh and the real world come down of sitting in a Holiday Inn Hotel Bar on your own, unable to sleep because of the adrenaline rush, looking at the other guests, who are generally unpleasant businessmen and as such are the dregs of humanity. But itÂ’s only that ten minutes of readjustment that I donÂ’t really like and occasionally the loneliness of the long distance punner.
9 - Quickly come up with three new comedy catchphrases that we can steal and sell to Harry Enfield.
”Cranberries!?” said in a high-pitched Northern accent with incredulity
“I don’t like it!”
“Oooo eeeee, I’ll be blowed.”
10 - What are the best and worst panel shows you've been on?
The Worst is definitely Never Mind the Fullstops which you can read on my non-award winning blog here -
http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/warmingup.php?id=1457
The Best I will say is Mind Games, because I got to sit next to Professor Kathy Sykes – here’s what I had to say about that in the blog that supposedly isn’t as good as yours. Well let’s let the public make up their mind. I think the injustice is palpable and somewhat embarrassing personally -
http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/warmingup.php?id=686
11 - What's your dental routine? You have good teeth.
I think they look better in photos than they are. TheyÂ’re a bit yellow in real life. I donÂ’t take particular care of them and guess I have got lucky in the way they have turned out. I lived in Leicestershire between the ages of 4 and 8 and they had fluoride in the water there, which apparently is part of the reason that I have very few fillings.
12 - What are you going to do right now?
Probably go home and think about doing some work on the script that I was meant to finish a month ago which I have only written three pages of. And then after I have thought about that I will probably just watch TV or play internet poker. Or think about who I am and where I am and become more unhappy than I was before.
