THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.17 - RICHARD HERRING

Episode Date: April 21, 2016

Adam talks to award winning British stand up comedian and podcaster Richard Herring about fizzy pop, being a Dad, hecklers and life in, and out of, a double act. Thanks to Seamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and Matt Lamont for additional editing. Podcast music/jingles by Adam Buxton except outro music bed from 'Wario’s Woods' game (Dr Buckles remix. Music composed by Shinobu, Soyo Oka, 1994) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm not going to listen to this podcast because it contains bad language, inappropriate subject matter, and silly men. I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buxton. I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this. That's the plan. I'm singing along with my jingle because I am a massive tool. Hey, hi, Adam Buxton here. How are you doing? Thank you so much for joining me for podcast episode number 17. And you may be able to hear that I am not out in nature with Rosie today, but in a room.

I'm actually in London. I don't know if you've ever been to London. It's huge. There's a lot of opportunities around here and I've come to snaffle some, do a bit of work. Very exciting. Streets are paved with gold here. Did you know that? Yeah. Okay. Today's podcast features a conversation with comedian, actor, writer, husband, father, and podcaster, Richard Herring. Now, you may know Richard as the host of Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre podcast or Rahelestapa, as the cool kids call it,

on which he interviews and occasionally antagonises comedians, mainly both up and coming and super famous, like me. He was also part of the double act Lee and Herring with Stuart Lee, with whom he made several comedy series for the BBC in the mid to late 90s, when I used to feel quite jealous and threatened by them both, as I did by most people in comedy at the time. I'm glad to say I'm far more well-balanced and easygoing now. Richard, also far more well-balanced and easygoing, works tirelessly as a stand-up comedian. He's excellent at it and well-respected within the industry. He creates a whole new one-hour live show more or less every year.

What a maniac. And he releases them on video or DVD through the independent distributor Go Faster Stripe. So you should investigate if you haven't already done so. He also writes a regular column for the London newspaper Metro. And he occasionally writes and does acting jobs for TV. He has recorded a daily audio diary piece for over 10 years now that he puts on his SoundCloud page. Warming Up, he calls them. They're about five minutes long and he just chats about whatever he's up to. And every single day for over 10 years, he's done it.

It's pretty wild. Actually, we don't talk about that in this chat. But there was a lot of other stuff to talk about. I've appeared on Richard's Leic, but there was a lot of other stuff to talk about. I've appeared on Richard's Leicester Square Theatre podcast a couple of times. That is recorded in front of a live audience, of course, and it's quite a different sort of thing to this podcast. Our conversation today was less overtly comedic and nutty than one of Richard's Leicester Square Theatre podcasts. This is more of a kind, well, this is two guys just sat in a room

in the front room of Richard's West London house one afternoon a month or so ago. And we chatted about various things. What did we talk about? We talked about fizzy pop addiction, the weird tricks your mind can play on you when you're caring for young children podcast sponsorship and selling out richard's love of creating awkward moments on stage and of course life after the double act a lot of my favorite subjects there

so i'm gonna stop crapping on and say, here we go. Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's tune the bat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. Yes, yes. Hello. How are you doing? I'm good, thank you for coming round and bringing me some Earl Grey tea. I brought you a gift, which, yeah, was like a sort of packet of Earl Grey.

Now, I'm not a big tea expert or drinker. No. I thought I'd try and get more into tea as I got older, because I'm such a silly boy in so many ways, you know, in my tastes and just grew up liking sort of cold, fizzy drinks. Me too, yes. And not just grew up, then was a grown up. Yeah.

I just drank Diet Coke most of my adult life. That's right. Well, pop, any pop to begin with, then I thought I'm getting fat. So then I started drinking Diet Coke. Yeah, that's right. Diet Coke. But I didn't get many thinner. And you, and you sort of assumed well diet coke i mean

it's there's nothing there well it's just fizzy yeah greatness and then there was a guy that i used to work i used to work at a place called the chicago pizza pie factory oh yes and i see and it was run by an american called bob payton and bob uh was this big um guy from chicago and he drank about three large bottles of Diet Coke a day yeah and one day in his 50s he was driving on he was on the motorway he had a massive heart attack that can't have been just the Diet Coke I would say that it certainly contributed though wouldn't you think well I when we I used to write uh with Stuart Lee I used to go around his house where he'd come around my house and we probably I would get those yeah two litre bottles and I would comfortably drink at least one of those a day. Yeah.

But yeah, I think I, you know, I gave up drinking dark chocolate. I occasionally have it. No, exactly. It's no good. I've tried phases of giving various things up just to see what it would be like. Yeah. You know, like stop boozing for a while and see how that works and you know uh not unsurprisingly you feel a little bit better but not so drastically that you think

oh i've got to stop boozing for the rest of my life because this is just great yeah maybe i'll get to that point but with when i gave up um diet for me it was diet pepsis when i gave up those for a while i really did notice a bit of a change yeah I think it was just starting to interfere with me in a natural yeah physical way like when you're not on them you feel well less jangly obviously without all that caffeine that's true and just a bit more energetic and even I think but then tea so I'm thinking good for you though right is it I think it's meant to be it's got tannins in it right I think those are good because what happened with me right we can talk about this I was going to meant to be. It's got tannins in it. Right. I think those are good. Because what happened with me, right, we can talk about this. I was going to talk to you about this later, sponsorship and podcasts, right?

I've been seeking a sponsor for my podcast. Have you been sponsored by Earl Grey Tea? Is that what's happening? Well, no. But a tea manufacturer did get in touch and say that they were interested in... I think, it doesn't really matter, I can say who it is. It's Yorkshire Tea. Oh, yeah.

Well, they're good. I'm from Yorkorkshire originally i approve that yeah it's a good solid working class product um for a good solid working class guy like me an honest um blue collar fellow yeah and so i thought well that would be good but i'm not a tea drinker so that that would be a bit fraudulent if i was just being sponsored by someone. I didn't even use their product. So you thought you'd start drinking tea. So I used to get sponsored. Exactly.

Yeah. So I went out and I got some Yorkshire tea and I was like, okay, I'm going to be a Yorkshire tea guy now. Yeah. And, um, you just couldn't stomach.

You tried to drink it. That's right. I can't stomach this. I love Yorkshire tea. You have to drink a bit, Adam. Every time you're sponsored. If I puke, do You have to drink a bit, Adam, every time you pounce for it. If I puke, do I get less money?

No, I liked it. It was great. And I thought, oh, I can, this is my new routine. I love tea. I understand why people like tea. Although I did feel like I was getting that old buzz off it that I used to get from Diet Pepsis. Well, it's caffeine still.

Right. It's still caffeine. So how much caffeine is in a cup of... I think not as bad as not as bad as coke i don't think but um not as bad as coffee but i drink green tea sometime and that's that's but you see like and i've stopped drinking coffee in the afternoon really after about three because i can't sleep so that's so but sometimes i'll have a green tea and i'll forget that that's got caffeine and the diuretic aspect is annoying yes it is it can be so um yeah i mean that's that's the issue if you if you're working in cafes or whatever and you then either have to leave your computer to go to the toilet or take your computer with

you to the toilet which is what i do it's quite it's annoying if that's every 30 seconds but again that's another old man problem that's sometimes now if i if the seal is broken yeah then it's just it's basically an endless flow but i just want to stop for a bit and they go sit down and just i can't sometimes with what you know just sometimes when i do gigs i drink a lot of water and then i just can't sleep for hours or have to get up every three hours it's awful it is never get old i went to the doctor at one point i mean this was years ago though this was back in my diet pepsi days when i'd be putting away two or three cans a day yeah and uh and i was just peeing all the time and i'd have my last diet pepsi maybe 10 minutes before i went to bed

sure nice little nightcap num num num and then be surprised when i had to you know get up two or three times before i went to sleep. Yeah. And then wake up a couple of times in the night. I was like, this isn't right. I'm only, you know, I'm still in my 30s or something. So I go to the doc and he suggests sticking his finger up my rectum to check my prostate. And so that was great in itself.

That was worth the trip. And something that everyone supposedly should do various regular i had a yeah i did that recently and it was a young woman doctor who apologized to me for doing it but i just felt more apologetic towards her that she had to that's an awful thing i had the thing which i think happens to a lot of people where it appeared that i was enjoying it from an from an outside perspective you know what i'm saying even though it was a doctor that i was enjoying it from an from an outside perspective you know what i'm saying even though it was a doctor that i did not find attractive and there are male doctors that whose attentions i would relish but this wasn't one of them no disrespect he's very professional and highly qualified but you've got to have it done anyway the upshot of this enjoyable investigation

it wasn't enjoyable it, it wasn't enjoyable. It wasn't anything to do with your prostate. No, nothing to do. And then he sort of says, are you under a lot of stress? And all he needed to say was like, are you drinking loads of Diet Pepsis, especially just before you go to bed?

I'm trying to give up fizzy pop. I know it's no good for me, so I tried hard to stop. But I like Fizzy Pop. Cold from the shelf at the top of the great big fridge in the Fizzy Pop shop. Gimme chemical prop. You watch House?

I do. Well, I went through a period of watching a lot of it on tour. I downloaded them onto my iPad and then watched them in the back of the... when I was being driven around at night. So I'd watch them kind of late at night.'ve never really watched the whole one are they good no I mean they're all right but they're all a bit repetitive and a bit similar yeah I think you know it's okay but I find it very hard to watch TV now and it's so yeah of course we've got we've got a few things we watch we watch The Walking Dead and now do you have little Phoebe with you

on your lap while you're watching The Walking Dead? You know, she was born. She was seven days late and I was really hoping, it was the season premiere of The Walking Dead, and I was really hoping she wouldn't arrive and ruin me seeing that. But she actually started arriving an hour after that season premiere. You know you can tape programs. I know, but it was still good to watch it live. And yeah, we have had a,

I think there's going to come a point where we can't. She's one years old now, near 13 months old. In fact, 13 months old. And she is sort of aware of stuff now and understands things. You know, we haven't taught her and you'll say, where's the monkey?

And she'll bring you the monkey and you go, oh, you really understand what we're saying a lot of the time now. Even though you can't talk. So the swearing we do in front of her and the terrible programmes we watch, it may be time to stop doing that. I know.

It's very hard to know when the cut-off point is. I mean, that never stops, though. I think back about some of the things I used to say to my children or things that I expected them to understand or conversations that I had with them when they were like six or whatever and you feel as if they're really i mean i always felt as if they understood everything yeah the the look i got from my middle child when he was born was this look of to me it seemed like utter contempt he just looked up at me and it was like what what was the expression that he had on his face and it's weird because sometimes the way he behaves it's a little bit like that

yeah now and you know it's 10 years later or whatever and i just thought he understands i know he understands what i'm saying and so i'd always have these conversations with them when they were way too young. Yeah. About all sorts of important stuff. Thinking, well, I've got to instill this early. Yeah. But it's mainly bullshit, I think.

It is, but it's fun talking to them. And I think it's good to talk to them. And I enjoy it. She does react. And we sometimes properly share a joke, you know, just through a look in a way that is really enjoyable. Yeah, yeah. properly share a joke you know just through a look in a way that is really enjoyable yeah yeah so she'll look at me and kind of raise her eyebrows almost at something that katie my wife's done or so she's really i think she's tuned in she wants to find things funny it's like she's that lovely

stage if everyone's laughing she'll just start laughing as well because she wants to look like she gets what's going on uh but she does find proper things funny as well so i mean i'm very much enjoying that aspect. But yes, we should probably shield her from the horrific world. Mind you,

but you know, The Walking Dead isn't, well, it hasn't happened yet. Taking her out in Shepherd's Bush where I live is pretty much

as dangerous. The other day, so this is something you'll be interested in. The other day, I took her out and my wife was really tired and we were kind of

a bit bickery with each other and I said, look, why don't you go home and I'll look after her. And my wife went home. So there was a lot going on inickery with each other. And I said, look, why don't you go home and I'll look after it. And my wife went home. So there was a lot going on in Shepherd's Bush. A lot of, it was one of those days where everyone's angry and there's lots of arguments.

And you think it might be the full moon, but I checked and it wasn't. I sat in this cafe and there was this, and I hadn't really, I'd looked around and there wasn't, I thought I was sitting in a seat where no one was around. Then I suddenly had noticed in the corner, it was basically a, you know, I mean, a homeless guy, I would say. With a big white beard and sitting there you know in his Santa it was he was sort of he looked unaffable and a nice homeless guy he might not have been homeless but he was certainly yeah you know he had the style yeah it was certainly like a guy you wouldn't you'd be sort of I was a little bit of thinking oh should I move is it could he be crazy and could he do something that my daughter thought now you know I'll be the bigger liberal man and he's done nothing so wrong.

And so I was feeding Phoebe a little bit of my panna cioccolata and I didn't want to give her too much, but then it ran out and she wanted more and I gave her a crumb. And then this guy, he said, hey, hey, hey, hey. And then he reached into his bag and ripped off a big thing of sort of apple Danish and gave it to me. He said, go, go. And I said, oh, no, no, no.

He said, no, no, it's Italian. It's good. Now eat it. And so I was then forced into the position, do I give my tiny daughter a piece of food given to me by a complete stranger who could be crazy, could be dirty? Or do I then offend him by not giving her any of the food

and look like a horrible person because he's being nice? What do I say? And it was a big quandary. Modern dilemma. Yeah. And I decided to give my daughter a tiny little bit of the inside, side bit of the Danish side

to see that he, that I was, but then why was I, I was more worried about offending this guy than it was about protecting my own daughter. And I knew if my wife had been around, she'd have felt differently. But you were right to be worried because on some level you must have

known that the chances of him giving you something that was going to be bad for your daughter are absolutely microscopic of course yeah and it's only our exposure to these kinds of horror stories that people latch on to of course so you know I felt but then I did a sort of middle ground where I gave her a little bit and then kind of left the rest on the plate and then said, oh, we've got to go now. You know, so it was embarrassing both. I did the wrong thing both ways.

But also I didn't want to give up. She gave it a massive bit of Danish, you know, but it was at, my wife heard about it, she said, well, you know, and then she found out that Danish had been in his bag and not, wasn't the official produce of the coffee shop. So it wasn't that she was annoyed that he'd broken the rules,

but it was that he actually could have made that at home, filling it with his own apple filling. Or whatever, but it's super... Or he could just have had germs or whatever. So it was a really weird situation to be placed into. And then I saw him a couple of days later when I was with my wife and I said, that's him. And she said, oh, you should definitely not you could have said listen i don't want the danish but

could i give you a kiss but also i couldn't really say to him look i'm worried about my daughter i don't want her to eat lots of sugary things i'd give her a tiny bit of this you know it's a blah blah there was lots of reasons not to or she's right you could have pretended that she was intolerant. I could have done. And as a stranger, you shouldn't really give... You know the kind of rules. But also, if you're encouraging... She's too young to get that lesson, but...

Yeah. You're saying, don't take stuff from strangers. If I then take something from a stranger and give it to her, that's giving her a bad message. So there was a lot of... There was a moral maze in there. Yes, don't take stuff from strangers unless there's a chance you might offend the stranger.

You don't want to hurt the feelings of the person. Don't get into the car of a strange man unless he looks mortified. Unless he looks hurt. Please, I just want to molest you a little bit.

Come on, nobody gets into my car anymore. But I'm so terrified about bad things happening to you, obviously, as everyone is. Obviously, yeah, yeah.

But I just, and I think it does with all parents, but I do a routine about it in my new show, but all as everyone is. yeah, yeah. But, you know, but I just, and I think it does with all parents, but I do a routine about it in my new show, but all the awful things that I think about. I used to have this thing, when I used to carry them downstairs, when they were tiny,

you know, one or two, and I couldn't stop imagining just losing my footing on the stairs, and tumbling down, and just crushing them. Because that could actually happen. Well, any of those things of those things where you just worry what if you have a heart attack and right you know or just collapse and you're on your own with all those sort of things

i kind of have crazy you know in the show i talk about i had crazy crazy ones where like you know just feeding her and then going the voice in my head's going oh don't twist her head off don't twist her head around it's like teetering at the edge of the precipice yes and and imagining what it would be like to step off yes but you don't actually obviously you're it's like teetering at the edge of the precipice and and imagining what it would be like to step off yes but you don't actually obviously you're it's like your body is your mind is rehearsing it so that you don't do it yes but it's you can't help but consider it but mine went to the stage of sitting watching and the voice of my head talking about whether the whether the people who do kill their kids have a voice in their head and they don't learn the lesson that it's meant to

be an evolutionary advantage but actually they obey have a voice in their head and they don't learn the lesson that it's meant to be an evolutionary advantage, but actually they obey the voice in their head. They just go ahead. And they're crazy. And what if you're one of those people who's crazy and kill your own kids? That's the scary thing. One of the scary things about drugs, I guess, is that you're short-circuiting so many of those things potentially, aren't you?

I mean, you know, drug advocates would tell me to lighten up and know it's fine. I once had an argument with david cross oh yes the comedian he did some material in his set about um a time in his life when he took heroin i don't know if he even regularly does still but he said he certainly seemed to at one stage and i asked him anyway i i asked him if it was real afterwards i was like did you really take heroin so yeah sure and um and we ended up uh getting into a weird conversation where i was kind of characterized as this daily mail-ish finger waggy oh you shouldn't take heroin he's like what's the problem with heroin i thought well it's bad for you i'm pretty sure it's really bad isn't it it's like i don't know i grew up in the 80s there were lots of ads about it i think you end up stealing your mum's jewelry don't you and that's

to say nothing of the deleterious health uh consequences and he's like that's bullshit and he said it's fine and people can handle it it's just the it's the man is uh putting out lots of disinformation about heroin. He may have been winding me up as well. That's the other thing. I doubt. I mean, you know, people who take drugs seem to enjoy them. I've never, it's never really, again, it's not just having a baby. I always worry too much about everything.

So for take the danger aspect of drugs, even if it's like a minimal risk. I'm going to drink though. So that's, you know, that's, I mean, alcohol is just as dangerous over the longterm, I suppose. And you can do stupid things when you're drunk but I just was too scared I was worried that I

damaged my brain as much as that's the thing for me it's the mental thing that's what always scared me off psychedelics and stuff the idea that you can have

a mental break in that way and just lose yourself yeah and never really get that back and I think you do see

people even like drug takers, who are different than they used to be. Oh God, yeah. This is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional.

I love browsing your videos and pics, and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. So listen, I'm excited that we are finally closing the, well it's not really a circle, it's a triangle.

Yeah. The podcast triangle between you, I've been on your show, you are now on my show, you've been on Scroobius Pip's show, he's been on yours, and I've had Scroobius Pip and I've been on his as well. Yeah, we've all done each other's and now we can stop. Yeah. What is it that, I mean, you still like doing them, right? I really love your podcast, you know that I do.

Yeah. And for a while I was very proud to be the only person that was, well, the only repeat guest until David Mitchell ruined that. Stuart's done it as well. Stuart's done it twice. Right. But I think you were the first to do it twice, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. And then David Mitchell, who I think, you and David Mitchell, I think, are probably the proper archetypal Less Square Theatre guests.

I think especially him, I have to say, because he's very... I was very jealous when I heard his one. He's very... I was like, oh, he's done a better job. He's very good with the pedantry and the stupid questions and treating me like I'm a child. But what I love about that show is that it's... I think it morphs with whoever's the guest,

especially if Morph is the guest, then it's doubly Morph. I might try and get on. That would be a long, tortuous appearance. Just a one to film. But, yeah, it very much depends on the guests. then it's doubly more so I might try and get on that would be a long tortuous appearance just a one to film uh but but yeah it very much depends on the guests I think some of them are very much dominated by the guest and some of them the guest is a little bit reserved sometimes with the newer people it's hard to get stuff out of them sometimes they're scared of revealing too much so I think I'd prefer the ones where people are quite established and and then open up you know

even the ones I've found difficult to do or found like, you know, something weird's happened in them. Like which of the weird? There's a couple that stand out for weirdness for me. Yeah. And one of them is very recent, Ray Peacock. Yeah, but that was amazingly exciting to be part of, though. That was really interesting. And I made it, I was very tired. I was very tired in this whole last series.

We were having difficulties with the baby and it was very, you know, it was getting to the end of the week and it was very difficult to kind of stay awake and do two long podcasts. So people will probably seek out the episode after they've listened to this, but if they haven't heard it yet... Basically, there was just two women in the front

who had had a little bit too much to drink, which was weird because it was Sunday afternoon and were talking with each other, as happens quite a lot at comedy gigs, thinking, I think, that they were whispering to each other, but actually just talking. They talked a lot through Ray Peacock's one, and I wasn't hearing it as much as he was,

and then he just asked them to be quiet, basically, and they decided he was being sexist, or that he had been sexist, and they were offended by him, but he hadn't. He really hadn't. He really hadn't done a thing. I'd done some things. They were fans of mine, and I've seen them at gigs before,

and they're very nice people, and I think they just got a little bit drunk and then got a bit uppity and this happens a lot at comedy gigs usually in the evening that someone who's too drunk to understand

they've been beaten or that they are actually being a little bit rude or they just get into that sort of entitled self-centred place where they cry offence. Yeah, well they think

they're in the right and they think someone else has offended them. And Ray Peacock, Ian Baldsworth is his real name, he's a very sensitive performer and he's going through a bit of a crisis about whether he wants to perform and he's going... Yeah. And he's sort of fed up of this sort of thing happening.

It does happen a lot at gigs. I think especially at the kind of circuit comedy shows. So I think it was just... It came at a weird point for him. But then it led on to him talking quite openly about that. It was, you know, it's actually the most viewed YouTube one we've done, including all of the big names we've had. I think partly because slightly annoyingly, men's right, meninist guys have used this as proof that feminists are all

crazy oh dear so they you know they've gone on a forum and then lots of them have come to watch it to prove that all it proves is drunk people are stupid it doesn't it doesn't just because a woman calls sexism when there is no sexism doesn't mean that all accusations of sexism are automatically nullified i mean he went in pretty hard though and he was i was trying to listen out for the tremor in his voice because as soon as i get a whiff of confrontation in my uh life whether it's just my personal life or my professional life if i'm on stage or whatever i get really rattled you know i don't like it and you can hear it in my voice yeah but um he was i mean he's he's a lot more experienced as a stand-up i

mean i think you just got there was what there's the youtube clip of me dealing with a heckler which is quite a long time ago now but that literally came it's a similar thing because it came at the end of a week where i'd done six gigs in a row and every single one of them have had something unpleasant happen you know either to another act or to me or just a lot of difficult audience interaction and then i did this gig on a gig on a Sunday where it was like a sketch show and a burlesque show. It was one of those weird mixture of things. And the audience were, there was a 30-minute sketch on before me

which had no jokes and the audience were all very indulgent of it and laughing at the few jokes in it. And I thought, oh, tonight's going to be a fight. It's going to be all right at last. And then the minute I stepped on stage, this guy suddenly tripped over to the stage where he was too drunk. You know, it's that thing where alcohol makes you lose all sense of everything and this guy went nuts.

And you can see in that, what I think is interesting about that, if you check that on YouTube, you can see how angry I am and at points I lose control of what I'm saying and I'm going too hard. I shut that guy down, I shut him down, I shut him down, I gave him opportunities to get out. I gave him an opportunity to join in. I defeated him and he kept on coming, you know. And then it was only taken out when he sort of stood up

as if to attack me and then was waiting outside for me. So what did you do outside? I wasn't, but, you know, weirdly, I've had lots of experience where guys have nearly fought me on stage and on stage. And on stage, and this is off stage, so it's slightly different. But on stage, I just feel completely protected and fine, which is wrong. But I feel like I'm going to be okay.

And so I'm unusually brave. And as I left this club, he was waiting outside. But he was so drunk. I just thought there's no way, even if he came for me, he would miss. Because he'll be seeing three of me. So I just walked past him and didn't say anything and i knew he was too drunk he was literally almost paralytic you know he's almost i think he was leaning against the wall if not sitting on the floor you know so it was he was saying that he was going to stab you or something yeah well i yeah he said you can't joke about oh yeah that's right you you mentioned stabbing and he was like

you can't joke about that yeah i think i've mentioned in the terms of the orient express as well i think that was that we should all kill him and you know you can't and like you can't joke about that yeah I think I've mentioned in the terms of the Orient Express as well I think that was we should all kill him and you know you can't joke about people out there getting stabbed left right and centre

is what he said which I should have done a joke about the most efficient way to say it but yeah so he was you know

he just it was very bizarre but these things happen and so that week it happened a lot and I think Ray and this thing had just had a

week of lots of it happening but yeah I mean i've been faced nose to nose with a squaddie in older shot well it's a gig i talk about a lot because john oliver and uh andy zoltzman were we were both doing edinburgh previews very early on and these people have come expecting like 20 minutes of observational comedy and got john oliver and andy zoltzman talking about whatever something bizarre and then i was doing a show about Greek myths and the 12 tasks of Hercules and they were oh god not another one and I said look

you're at the wrong show I'll happily give you my portion of the money back if you just want to leave I don't want you you go no don't judge me mate I'll you know I might enjoy this

and then a minute later he walked out and I said see you could have had five quid back and then he literally came right up to me nose to nose

and I was still just you know and then this guy's probably in the SASas or something because that's they're all based in and you're so brave in that well i am in that i feel so protected and you know he could have actually killed me there was no one there to yeah i guess because do you think part of you is thinking this is fun i mean this is sort of a spectacle for the audience as well like if he if he pushed you it would be even more outrageous i think so entertaining yeah and also you're in the position where you have to be in control of the so if you show any weakness then you've lost the audience especially so you know you have to remain strong and in control yeah even if your character is out

of control you still need to be in control of that out of controlness you know so i think there's an element where it's just like no i'm you know i'm not i'm gonna front this out i don't think you're gonna hit me but yeah and comedians get hits and people you know have hit people on stage it wasn't even being filmed so it would have been useless to you know that's often a good thing now for someone who punches you that goes viral and worldwide yeah but weirdly the other head because it's weird that the other thing was being filmed just because they were filming the night so that did go online and that's had more hits

than anything I've ever done that's like four million hits I think that's had or something certainly I mean you can go surfing for heckle videos

there's quite a few entertaining ones out there but yeah your one is one of the classics well just because it goes on I don't know why no one really stopped it

but it was entertaining and I was doing okay yeah you wonder what are the security guys doing well they arrived the minute he started standing up and going for me they arrived but yeah but so I think they also think you know that's not that it is sort of not their job it is my job to deal with that but it's tedious you know and then people think you know like there's it's interesting what people think about comedy there was a review of like just an online review that you catch accidentally sometimes of my show but this guy who was a comedy fan just annoyed that i didn't do any banter with the

audience for the you know i've seen other comedians they do 30 minutes of riffing off the audience and and i you know i just feel that's not if you're going to see a show that you're paid for i feel that's rude to you know some people are great at it and that's part of the character or whatever but i would rather write a 90 minute show that's all written rather than going, what's your job? And let's see if we get, you know, let's see if we get five minutes of good stuff out of this 20 minutes. Yeah, sometimes it's like a theatrical experience. It's like a play and you want to just get through it and do it as well as you can. And you want to hone it and get it really slick.

But I know it's people always say when things go wrong during my shows which are uh by by their nature quite pre-prepared because they're mainly off the laptop they're like sort of presentations with me interacting with them and i want them to go smoothly you know but there are often shows where things go wrong and there are technical breakdowns and for me it feels like a bad show you know but people always say oh i loved it i loved it when it went wrong yeah so yeah it's it's fun when it goes wrong for a little bit but if the whole show is derailed completely and you can't carry on it's it's really bad it happened to me once it at um at the tabernacle right and i had a technical

problem which was totally insurmountable about 10 minutes in and i was supposed to be headlining and i had another 40 minutes worth supposedly and i realized i'm not i've got nothing yeah you know and now i'm able to riff a little bit more in a live setting and and talk to the audience a bit more then i really couldn't and i didn't feel able to and i just had had to say, listen, I'm sorry, this is not going to happen. So, and in the spur of the moment, I said, listen, I'm really sorry.

I'm going to do another gig. I'm going to find a venue and put on a free show. And if you want to come along, write your email address down and I'll get in touch with you and let you know where it's going to happen. But I'm afraid I can't do it, you know? Yeah.

And it wasn't a question of refunding them the ticket because it had been there were other acts on that night so they'd had an evening of entertainment sure and i didn't really expect that many people to put their everyone yeah of course and then i you know i spent a whole day emailing all these people and trying to find a venue and doing a gig for free and oh it was a total pain in total pain in the arse. And what I should have done in retrospect was just tough it out and go, well, this is the show. Things go wrong. Yeah, yeah.

I'll just fool around and it'll be a different kind of show. And they would have been perfectly fine. Of course. I think, you know, you learn as well with time. I mean, it's difficult. Yeah. And, you know, I've now done performing comedy in front of audiences for like 20, well, 30 years, 29 years.

And I didn't, you know, it's only the last 10 or so that I've really started doing proper what I just call stand-up. And even then I wasn't really, you know, it took me a few years to kind of feel confident on stage and get to that point. But you do, you know, you just do it and then you, something goes wrong and you would decide to tell, you know, you could, but you've got so much stuff actually.

It's interesting, like when I had Richard Bacon on on the um podcast yeah i really enjoyed that yeah but he's you know he did stand up comedy and sort of died uh in edinburgh but actually all the stories he told in that podcast were absolute gold you know that story the stories about his dad and you go actually you could do the same you know just tell some of the stories that you would three you would toss off on here and not think about and just go well i'm going to talk about this instead no i can't do yeah i guess or ask for questions but you're very good at rolling off other people uh you know so it's actually just having the confidence to to do it so i came out of sound about 2005 i'd done this hercules show and i'd taken on lots of challenges and i'd hated doing stand-up the first time solo stand-up the first time i'd done it

and didn't feel i could do it and then i started doing the double act and radio and TV stuff, and so I kind of stopped doing live stuff. And so I thought, well, this is a big, why do I hate it so much? And now I'm essentially doing one-man shows, so why can't I do this? So I sort of came back to it. And I remember seeing a gig with Reginald D. Hunter, and he was a bit late, and he came in and he was a bit drunk. And he just sort of came in, it was a smallish audience he just said i just want to talk chat about stuff and i think he might have

even pulled up a chair and sat down and he's an amazing comedian but it seemed to me that he just pulled an hour of material out of his arse and talked and was brilliant and funny and you kind of go and i and at that stage i was just doing a very scripted 15 20 minutes or working you know i would sometimes mess around with it but it was very, oh, I must hit my jokes and hit my... And I just saw this guy talking for an hour and being charming and funny and so engaging. You know, and it's one of those gigs you remember. And it's one of those gigs that will never be repeated. That's what I love about live comedy.

You get these nights where something happens and it just becomes this experience. Yeah. That can never be understood from outside the room and never be repeated that's what i love about live comedy you get these nights where something happens and it just becomes this experience yeah that can never be understood from outside the room and never be repeated and i just didn't know then i thought i'd love to get to that stage but i can't imagine i'll ever be at that stage but then now basically when i do a new show especially that's sort of how i start i just go and talk for an hour yeah uh and you know have a few stories that i've thought about but actually i work most of it up on stage now if i in fact if i write something i find that so difficult now to put into a stand-up show i have to read it for a bit because i can't i just can't remember it if i've if i've written it and it's written down and it's a structure well it's often very jarring when you make the shift from just talking naturally to an audience to actually reciting something exactly but you know eventually

you are sort of reciting a script but it still feels natural but yeah but but yeah so that's it's just the the stage time i think and you know you've obviously mainly done tv radio stuff but that's still hours and hours of performing but there's room for both approaches though i don't like it when people get prescriptive about anything really and about comedy especially when people sort of say, Oh, comedy shouldn't be about this or it shouldn't be about that. And it's like, fuck off.

It can be, can't it be about everything? And there's different ways of doing it and it's fine. There are, but I think you could, in that situation, I think you could have done delivered an excellent 30 minutes that everyone would have been delighted. Yeah.

Well, I mean, when I did email people about that show at the tabernacle, a lot of them replied and said, yeah, great. Do a free show. But I had a really good night and it was really funny watching it go wrong.

You know, when things ground to a halt, I asked if there was an it person in the audience and everyone laughed because they thought it was like a sort of, is there a doctor in the house? I think I was like, no, I'm serious.

If there's anyone who knows about it, could they come up? And three people came up in succession to try and fix this problem I had. I was using a Photoshop document and the bottom of the, and if you're familiar with Photoshop listeners, then you will know that you have a document you're working on. In this case, it was, I used to display the YouTube comments that I read out on this Photoshop document and reveal them line by line by using layers on the document and the side tab was where you would reveal the layers but the bottom of the tab had drifted off

when i connected it to the projector it was no longer i could no longer reach it on the screen it was under the screen and i couldn't move the cursor down to bring it back onto the screen so i couldn't finish the revealing these layers i was like how the hell do i do this is ridiculous and i was like does anyone know this has got to be a simple problem to fix and i was like yeah you zoom zoom the thing and it's like i've tried that and people say reopen change the resolution and it just went on for ages i was like after a while that to me it sounded like the laughter was diminishing this is not entertaining this is bad i bet it was but it's well that is bizarre because i use something i use a projector very you know and literally just

a few slides or whatever but that so often it takes yeah three hours to set it up because the resolution's wrong or the projector doesn't recognize the computer or the projector changes what's on the computer to complete you know you took it up and the resolution's wrong or the projector doesn't recognise the computer or the projector changes what's on the computer to complete, you know, you hook it up and then suddenly it all changes on the computer to something else. Why is no one making a simple, portable, large projection screen? For the comedians who, the few comedians who use that. Well, there's more and more.

There are. Me and Joe Morpurgo would buy one. So you don't have a sponsor on your podcast. No. You must have considered it. Yeah, I've had a few offers, but to be honest, they've not been enough money to justify what I think people perceive as selling out.

So I think people would assume you're getting a lot more. And I think you need, you know, and actually I need, if someone says here's £100,000, I would have to consider that because I can do a lot with £100,000. But if someone's saying here's £5,000, I go, well, actually that's only really enough to film one or two episodes of the square theater podcast but if you had a sponsor whose product you were fine with and they were they were a decent company that treated their employees well yeah

well i always had a problem with advertising at all yeah and it's softening because i also think that that's a very 20th century attitude in a lot of ways. I think the truth is that art and commerce have to go a bit hand in hand now. And certainly on the internet, I think. I do Kickstarter. I've Kickstarted the Less Square Thick Podcast filming. And that last year took, I mean, we made sort of 70 or 80,000 pounds on Kickstarter to do that. I'm trying to raise 100,000 pounds as it occurs to me on Kickstarter. But I love the idea of my 150,000, 200,000 listeners, viewers

giving me a pound. I mean, if they would do it every month, that would be incredibly lovely. If they would do it every year, that would still be incredibly lovely. If everyone who listened did that, and then you say, well, in return, here's 50 less worth of podcasts,

here's six, as it occurs to me, here's all this stuff, and you've paid a pound, you know or a pound a month and that's it's not going to happen and we i'm sort of trying to do that and people about one or two percent of people seem to give like money so it's still not an it's not an insignificant amount of money but if you if you could if i could do it through the fans i would love to do it but again i think then there's just i'm always conscious of the fact that i'm nearly 50 and time is passing by and i would love to get stuff done so i'd like yeah i would be up for it if the right thing came along and a few things have come close and i'm considering that i might do voiceovers and things now which i've always turned down before i do corporate gigs now which i always turned down before because i think if i can do

a corporate gig and make a certain amount of money in an evening that frees me up to do a lot more stuff yeah exactly for the rest of the manual and there's corporate gigs and there's corporate gigs you know what i mean like you're not doing something for the arms trade no no well i do i'm quite even though they're very well paid and they and they treat you really well and you get a free weapon uh i do what you know i do like award ceremonies mainly which i'm quite good at which i don't think there's even whoever you're doing those for there's not really much of a problem they're kind of difficult and annoying gigs but they're because people don't listen to you but then also you're just thinking i don't care but you're at

that i always remember um being at uh an award thing once and i won't say the name of the comedian but he was hosting quite a successful comedian and he clearly felt bad that he had agreed to do this show and you know what it's like they the audience is kind of rowdy they're just out for a jolly and they're not really listening they're not really concentrating they just want to get pissed generally. And this comedian was getting very irritated. He was like, come on, listen, I'm talking. Will you shut up? And then he started calling them sort of coked up suit monkeys and getting really aggressive.

And I think sort of playing to himself in the crowd, imagining someone like himself sort of thinking, oh, what's he doing? Sell out. And so he was kind of trying to show them, I'm not a sellout. I'm insulting them. I've taken their money,

but I'm going to insult them. And I just thought that is, you're, you're just losing both battles. Yeah. You can't, if you've done it, you can't then go,

Oh, I'm too cool to do this. Yeah. But also, I mean, there's a fine line to tread because like the last one I did, I was, there was a certain amount of people listening to me. I mean, the problem with me is some people know who I mean, there's a fine line to tread because like the last one I did, I was, there was a certain amount

of people listening to me. I mean, the problem with me is some people know who I am, but most people don't. So the people who know who I am are quite excited that I'm there, but that's a tiny amount of people.

So I was playing to the people who were listening and I was slipping in a few, you know, jokes about the other people. I think you've got to be a little bit rude, but yeah,

if you start trying to take the moral high ground or, you know, you can't do it, you've taken the gig, you've decided whether you're going to do the gig they're not I wouldn't you know they're nice to do every now and again

because you think oh well that puts some money in the bank and that means I can do something else if you did them every night you'd be very rich but you'd also be crushed there'd be a hole in yours but I feel that with you know just think I mean we did feel so strongly about it about adverts in the past

but you know like the other day I was asked to act in a... I mean, it was a voice thing. I was asked to act the voice of some flavour in some crisps. And I thought, well, hey... It's one of the most challenging roles there is. But I thought, they're not asking me as Richard Herring, really. They're asking me... Which flavour, Richard?

Was it cheese and onions? Just flavour in general, I think. I was just the wonderful... No, they went a different way. But I was considering going to do... You know, and it was... They told me, you know, it was a good payday for two days' work.

And I figured it's a voiceover. I could even claim it wasn't me if I wanted to. But then also, they're not... I'm not going on going, hi, I'm Richard Herring and I love the flavour of these crisps because you all love me. And I've always said that, you know,

when my friends who act in adverts, you kind of go, well, that's how you make money. You're an actor and that's how you make... So it's... I think, like, if you're a massive star and you're already a millionaire and someone gives you £200,000 to advertise some crisps, you kind of go, well, why are you doing...

You know, you've already got so much money. Why do you... But then I've got lots of money, really, most people i live in a nice house and and so you know there's a you always look up to the next level of person to go it's those guys once you get very wealthy richard they're all kinds of unforeseen overheads well that's what they always say but i but you know the second home the third home the nannies, the PAs. That is true. They've all got to get paid. But you, I would imagine that, you know, I would say that a lot of your live stuff is characterized by moments where you deliberately invite moments, not exactly of tension, but of discomfort.

Yeah. tension but of discomfort yeah and you will you won't shy away you won't try and gloss over those and sometimes you will gleefully let the evening grind to a halt yeah and concentrate on those moments all right so i guess you wouldn't do that in a in a in the corporate um well occasionally but not yeah you've got to be a little bit careful and why do you what do you feel compelled to to create those moments or concentrate on those moments? What is it about those moments that you love? I think it's just the drama. I mean, what I love about comedy is you can do all sorts of things and you can be quite serious.

I mean, I love making a serious point, but I think it's fun to play with the emotion. It's fun to play with the real truth of what you're feeling sometimes. I think in your own show you can do that. If you're really angry, sometimes you can let that out. Yeah. But it's funny when you're on your podcast and you're interacting with guests and I sometimes feel like you have the,

you feel like you owe it to them to be honest even when in a real life situation you wouldn't say some of the things you say. And the obvious one that springs to mind is Stephen Merchant. where clearly you're a fan clearly you like the guy and clearly you like a lot of what he's done yeah but not all of it and you just felt compelled you couldn't stop yourself well I actually felt with that that he kind of took it a bit the wrong way it was I think the I think he thought well he took a joke about I did the joke which I probably did with you was going what's it like being in a double act

when you're much better than the other person, but they're going to be more successful. And I think he thought I was trying to get him to get into Ricky and dig up some dirt about Ricky, not making the connection back that I was also talking about myself, obviously, and Stuart. And I was sort of surprised because I wasn't, I mean, we were being rude and over the top

and both of us coming back and forth and it seemed to be all in jest. And I think at the end of the day, we're fine and we've seen each other and he's not cross about it. Sure, yeah. And I think he was a little bit cross about it in the end. But I genuinely thought I'd be interested to know what was your motivation to change...

I think this was the point where it started turning. The first series of extras was about one thing and the second series of extras like a different sitcom and i just wondered what the motivation to change was because there seemed to me to be mileage in them being extras and being failures but the minute you make one of them a success or they're moving towards success yeah then it's a different sitcom and so everything has to change yes yes but he felt that you were being, you were sort of needling him too much. I think he did. But then I still thought he was joking a bit.

So when he was going on the bit with David Bowie's good, and I was going, oh, a bit self-indulgent, you know, I was sort of joking. Yeah. But I think he thought I genuinely meant it. And I wasn't even saying the second series of X-Men wasn't any good. I was just asking why was the change. So then because it became like a thing,

I thought, well, I've got to ramp it up. But yeah, in that podcast, I mean, I'm sort of playing a character a little bit in the podcast and that's diminishing a bit. And when it started, it was a bit like, how come you guys have all done so well

and I haven't? You know, there was that element to it, which was a little bit true, but also for the fun of it. But also it goes back to Collins and Herring, really. This is what it came out of. i was doing a podcast with andrea collins and i was the i was the voice in the head that you don't allow to say the things that you're thinking yeah i would say it to him and he would diffuse it and then when that stopped i thought that well i wonder if i

can do that with different people so i'm still playing a character who sort of says the wrong thing and mostly you know so simon pegg actually took a lot worse things i think who i thought simon pegg which we did the same day i thought simon pegg would be more lovey and more and i saw i was very critical of run fat boy run for example yeah uh and he took it in really good stead i thought because it was so but i think that's fun because they they don't get the a that you don't get people don't talk about their sort of failures as much, certainly after the event. And you don't get, you know, you don't get someone being a little bit more honest with you.

And I think most people run with it and quite like it. And I think actually a lot of the bigger, we used to do it, we did a show at Montreal Festival where I kind of, we interviewed some like film stars and stuff. And they actually were quite refreshed, I think by me asking stupid questions.

I think as long as they know that you're not trying to tear them down. Yeah. you don't hate them no well I don't have anyone on that I don't like so that's I think with Stephen I just think he did think oh no he's trying to get me into a place I don't want to be that's which was what I wasn't doing and I don't know him that well but we knew him a bit and I thought we can have we can you know I interviewed I introduced him as a definite paedophile or something you know but it was just like my i was just on i was and he took that okay i think but uh you know i was just you know i can get a bit overexcited and and you let but you let the the little voice take over yeah and i think it's it's most successful when that happens i think there's

a nice one in david mitchell where he talks about doing a sitcom with Ben Elton, the Shakespeare, playing Shakespeare. And he talks about it. I know, as soon as it came up, I was thinking, oh, hello. So there's a pause and I go, is it shit? But then, so he just took it really well. And we had an interesting discussion about whether Ben Elton's actually the Ben Elton is fair,

which I sort of don't think it is, even though I'm one of the prime exponents of it in many ways. But the things that work are the things that, so that David Mitchell thing was an enormous risk. I could have said that

and he could have gone, how dare you? Of course it isn't and that could have ruined the whole thing. Yeah, it could have gone all frosty. So it's the leap and then the audience going, oh, what's going to happen?

That's the exciting thing. And again, it came from a very early Collins and Herring podcast and he just talked about his mum believing that the number 13 was you know unlucky and stuff and he talked about it for a bit and i said your mum's a fucking idiot and there was a moment where he was shocked and then we just both laughed so much at the absolute inappropriateness of that obviously and obviously you could go you could say he could have gone how dare you she is not

yeah how dare you talk about my mom i don't like doing these podcasts it is a break it's a break it's a break in the podcast it is a bit between two other bits it's a break it's a break it's a break in the podcast it's like an necklace between two tits it's a musical break it's a pause in the podcast stopping one bit from merging with another bit break break break break break in the podcast kind of like a bum crack track so we talked a little bit there about the fact that you and I have had double act relationships. Yes. Which are difficult to negotiate in all sorts of ways. And certainly I would imagine every double act that stays together for any period of time has to go through a period where they're

unless they're ant and deck i and i always don't you like wonder about what it's like with that and deck because they never seemed i mean as far as i'm aware yeah they don't argue they just get along great they've both got the same ideas about what they should be doing and how their career should go and they stick to it and yeah it's totally uncomplicated and that dynamic is uh intact it's great yeah but if you've got two intelligent people and they're working together, at some point there's going to be some friction and there's going to be some different ideas about what you should be doing and what's worth doing.

And those are very painful moments. And then at a certain point, maybe you both decide to go off and do your own thing yeah and then you've got all the stuff of well it's like being in a couple and you break up and then it's like watching the other person go off and snog someone more attractive or whatever and it's very similar feelings of hurt and jealousy that you go through and comparing yourself to them and feeling like you're coming up short. And other people telling you in good faith. Right, exactly.

That's what I get mainly is just other people going, oh, you must wish you were Stuart Lee or whatever. But now, I mean, you must feel now that you've comfortably settled into your own areas. You both occupy very distinct different areas. Quite opposing areas. Well, in some ways, yeah. And and he sort of set himself up as he now seems kind of a little cranky and disconnected yeah in a way that you're really not and and and the podcast especially underlines the fact that you're

very much engaged with um new people coming up in comedy and you're still into it and interested in it yeah and a lot of the time Stuart can sound as if he's being quite prescriptive about what comedy should be and who it should be for and who should be doing it and do you find yourself having to sort of defend him or do you feel the urge to defend him sometimes never the urge to defend him no I I know I'm a big fan of him I mean I think he's sort of it's just a it's a weird situation yeah uh and i think at times i've coped with it better than other times i think yeah now i've come to a point where i i think just because we would you know we were we worked together for so long and we created a

way of doing comedy together uh and he was always doing stand-up on his own and his stand-up is slightly different but it still is connected to what we were doing so it was weird when i then came back to stand-up and i sort of started doing stand-up is slightly different, but it still is connected to what we were doing. So it was weird when I then came back to stand-up, and I sort of started doing stand-up just as he suddenly broke through as being the best stand-up in the country. And people then who maybe either didn't... It was more and more people who did know we'd worked together. We'd go, oh, well, this routine's a bit like Stuart Lee's one.

You kind of go, well, or is Stuart Lee's one a bit like... You know, is it... Which way has it gone? So there was no... Because they'd heard of him first or because he was more successful, they assume that he's the creator of something rather than vice versa. All that stuff's weird if you let it get you. And also you can, yeah, you can start going, oh God, you know, why isn't stuff going well for me or why don't I have a TV show? But I just think, you know, I think in the end, I've really quickly realised,

and this is partly what this show is a little bit about, I'm trying to grapple with this in the show, is that, yeah, I've realised you can't compete with other people anyway. It's pointless. You can spend your whole life doing that. I went to the Seinfeld gig a few years ago in London and they went to their after show party, which I hardly ever do. But you saw these people who kind of achieved,

all the other comedians who were successful and they're all looking over each other's shoulders they're looking at me going why are you at the party you know why are you suddenly in this the secret society and you know who's doing that nobody was who's sitting where and who's they were all just so jealous of each other they were unable to enjoy it uh and you can't think well that's you know you've got to look at yourself and what you're doing what makes you you happy. I guess it's different with me and Stu in that we still work in, you know, you and Joe are working in quite different fields. Yes, yes. And we're both stand-up comedians, so it's, you know,

that's difficult, especially when you're restarting being a stand-up comedian, for people to go, oh, you know, Stu, at least the best stand-up in the country, and you're automatically getting compared to them in a way nobody else would be. But, you know, A, I think he deserves it, and deserves be um but you know a i think he deserves it and deserves to be and you know i think he is a fantastic stand-up comedian yeah i am doing lots of different things than he would do i think i'm more uh more versatile than he is so i'm you know

i'm doing a lot of more different things within comedy i think um so there's lots of different ways of looking at it but i'm really at peace with it i'm really glad he's on tv because it gives you hope that you can get onto tv doing something like he's doing which i think hardly anybody else does he's done an amazing thing to get his own tv show and i think it was important to him and i think it used to be important to me uh the idea of recognition and then i kind of realized that i'm that by accident I'm in a position where I'm in a much happier place because I'm not struggling I'm not thinking I want to be famous I kind of don't want to be famous I want to be able to take my daughter out and to shop and not be hassled by people and not be then not get papped by people um but also I'm in a position where I'm autonomous

with what I'm doing i'm in control of everything i'm doing so i've managed to sort of get the stand-up ethos and do it in the rest of my work really and i'm not working for anyone else yeah exactly at all hardly i write scripts occasionally but 15 years ago i'd have loved i would think i'd want to get famous i'd probably look at someone like david mitchell and want to be david mitchell rather than stewart leeds because i would like to be in sitcoms and panel shows and been witty on panel shows and sort of be in a position where you can do what you want and be asked to act in things every now and again.

I used to be really angry that I'd never ever been nominated for any awards. All the Lee and Herring stuff never did. All the Edinburgh shows I've done, they've never been nominated for anything. At least you guys got mentioned in books about comedy occasionally but we're often overlooked I think

you know we're probably in a similar position to Adam and Joe but I think in that the fans of it hold it in high esteem and and think oh god it's you guys but most people I mean we we never really complained about it because we thought well it's fair enough we're not really comedians you know we didn't come out of live comedy. We're just sort of silly presenters in a way. You're at least still being shown on TV. I saw you on London Live the other day. Oh, on a weird... Yeah, right, right, right.

But we never got repeated. We bought our own DVDs to put them out. We bought our own shows to put them out on DVD. So it's this weird thing where it feels like semi-successful and not successful. I kind of wish it had happened a bit later for us and I could have appreciated it a bit more. But I'm also kind of glad that it worked for both of us, that it went wrong. It's difficult.

Like you say, all those things are difficult. We had very similar senses of humour, but a different approach. And also, you're just with someone all the time. I really think Stu couldn't... He found me irritating, but he couldn't envisage the time. I really think Stu couldn't, he found me irritating, but he couldn't envisage the fact that I would find him irritating as well. You know, he was always, he sort of assumed, well, I'm normal, and then Richard's being annoying.

He never understood that it was a two-way street. Yeah, of course, yeah. But, you know, obviously you're in each other's pockets and you're annoyed by each other. I had such a great time. We had the times I've laughed the most. I remember rolling around on the floor when we were writing things and you know just this is the best time ever and

there's lots of horrible times as well and yeah and you're still connected with each other and that's still weird and I think just the realization that accidentally I've ended up with something that I think is sort of better but but but there's an that you just do, you know, however your life goes, whatever you've got, you tell yourself this is better. I think there was a point where I worried my career was going to be over, but also I've been left alone. I've done 12 stand-up shows,

and most people wouldn't have any idea I'm a stand-up, even people who like other stuff I do. You know, by being left alone, you kind of create something much more interesting, and I think most good comedy comes out, you know, out of stuff like this, out of create something much more interesting. And I think most good comedy comes out, you know, out of stuff like this, out of people just saying, let's do our own thing. Let's have a go at something.

See, if something fails, it doesn't matter. If it's something that's successful, it doesn't matter. And people start, you know, there are different ways of doing things. Until, I think you just, having gone for, I've gone on for like nearly 30 years. I mean, I've known Stu for nearly 30 years. You know, there's ups and downs.

So at university, I was seen as the performer and I was in the review shows and Stu was the writer and the director kind of guy. And so you're kind of aware that those things can go in patterns and in 10 years' time, things might be different. But also, don't waste your time worrying about that or someone might be better than you at

something just do the best you can do with what you're doing exactly and and have confidence that you have something to offer you know yeah people don't like you say oh god you know what makes you think you're funny or you know the thing is being a comedian is you really do know whether you're funny or not because you go every night and if people laugh you've done well if they don't laugh you're not good yeah so if you're doing actually live comedy you're you get that every day if it's going badly you know you're bad but if it's going okay you go well at least not saying everyone's going to find me funny but these 200 people in this room or 150 at least 200 people in this room like me enough to you know laugh all the way through this show so I know that just because you don't find me funny

doesn't mean I'm not funny in fact I can prove to you I am funny not a mess to everyone but here's the proof so it's a job that you can actually have a you've got a literal barometer you've got a swingometer telling you if you're good or not really every night

so it's a weird one. So there we go. That's it for podcast episode number 17. Thanks very much indeed to Richard Herring for giving up his valuable time. Check out his website. He's got all his projects detailed there and you can contribute financially, emotionally, lots of good stuff he's got going on. And check out my website too if you feel so moved. You'll find various posts about most of the podcast episodes thus far, accompanied occasionally by additional pictures and videos

and related links. There's also details of upcoming live shows that I'm doing around the country, a lot of Bug Bowie specials, and also a few dates that I've got doing my own stuff as well. as well. I'm on a series of mixed bill shows doing 40 minutes of some of my material from 2014-2015, my laptop-based ridiculousness. I'm at the Brighton Theatre Royal on Sunday the 1st of May, Birmingham Town Hall Sunday the 8th of May, Manchester Opera House, Thursday 26th of May, and the London Palladium Saturday 28th of May. So check out my website where you should find details of those shows and who else is going to be on those bills, etc., etc. Thanks very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for production support

and Matt Lamont for additional editing skills. There you go. That's enough rambling for one week. Take care. Until next time. I love you. Bye.