Strap in Substack. Four for the price of one!

Warming Up Catching Up

You’re probably glad of a few days off, but here’s four blogs in one day for you!

7983/20924

Back to the village for my actual appointment, which turned out just to be a meeting with the pharmacist to see how my medication is going (I have very slightly high blood pressure, but so would you if you were moving house and hadn't sold your previous house yet). I'd had no bad side effects on the previous medication, but it hadn't really brought my blood pressure down much, so he suggested doubling the dose. I know from Ferrero Rochers how dangerous just doubling stuff can be.

But when I asked if I could pick up the stuff straight away he said it had to be signed off by a doctor so they'd text me when it was ready. Which means another trip and that it would probably have been quicker to wait til next week and get an appointment with the doctor.

I also showed him the cut on my hand which has got a bit red and sore and he agreed that that should be seen by a doctor, but he wasn't a doctor, so I had to make another appointment and a doctor couldn't see me until Tuesday. My hand will either have got better on its own or fallen off by then.

I hoped I'd get the results of my blood test today too, which I did, but again the pharmacist could only show me and I don't get to see a doctor about that until November. Though if my hand gets better can I go in on Tuesday and have a chat about the blood results? There are signs up saying that you're only allowed to discuss one problem at each appointment (what if the problems are connected though? And surely it's more efficient to sort out two things in ten minutes than have me come in again). It hardly needs saying,  but I will say if for future historians, the NHS is fucked. My sore hand will probably not kill me and my high blood pressure is only a mild cause for concern, but for others that kind of delay might prove serious or fatal and to be honest I'm annoyed that I have to spend the weekend with unpleasant hand pain.

I am less annoyed with the NHS (to whom I owe a great deal) than with myself and my own stupidity. Who would have thought that broken bowl I joked about on moving day would bite me from the bin when I tried to push more stuff on top of it or that that injury would then plague me for a couple of weeks. It's a bit like a very lame version of the because of a nail the horseshoe was lost and I am worried that it might end up with me buried under a car park in Leicester.

I think about this quite often, but the thing or person that will eventually kill you is out there is some form. You probably don't know that the thing will one day kill you (I never thought that that nice bowl that I bought in Habitat at the turn of the Millennium would come to get me), but it's out there, perhaps manufactured and ready to go, perhaps living already or perhaps in its constituent parts or still an egg or a sperm or whatever. Most likely the thing that will kill you is inside you already. I would never have suspected my ball of turning against me, but I am still very suspicious of my heart's ultimate motives.

I wonder what will kill me and what will kill you. Maybe the same nuclear missile.  That'd be nice. Think of me as you evaporate. Knowing our luck it will be something as apparently harmless as a bowl or a step on the stairs that you've trod on every day or a tomato that you're growing in your green house that is going to choke you. We don't know the face of our assassin, only that it is waiting for us out there somewhere and the only way to defeat it is to kill yourself in another way so it doesn't get the pleasure.

7984/20925

Into London today, with my first test of walking to the station to take the train. That all worked out well and I got taken directly to Blackfriars, just a ten minute walk from the studio I was recording in. I could see Tower Bridge from the platform and felt like a tourist. The Shard was partially in cloud. I nearly took photos.

I was doing a radio record with Dara O Briain and Isy Suttie. What a delight. We goofed around for an hour, talking around the subject of (in part) yoghurt (I don't know why they asked me to do this show - I did a whole hour long routine about how I am not obsessed with the stuff), but the conversation sprawled and went at tangents, none of which was prepared, but all of which was entertaining.  They were funny, I was funny, none of us having to work for it. What a joy. When you're with people you like and trust and know will pick up the ball if you fumble it, comedy can be effortless.

The producer had left a copy of the programme for Someone Likes Yoghurt on my desk. It was an important show for me as it was first proper foray into pure stand up in a 90+ minute format and it was quite an experimental and risk taking show, playing around with being pedantic and irritating, but with some good flights of fancy. When I came to do all my shows again in 2015 at the Leicester Square Theatre it was perhaps my least favourite show, but only because it was so relentless in its desire to batter the audience and the stuff about applying for Pope went on way too long. It was though the show of mine that sold the most DVD and download copies, so I think the fans liked it. And it set me on the road to the stand up shows that would follow that were usually less deliberately annoying.

But my main memory of it and the one I shared with Dara and Isy is that it won the Daily Telegraph Worst Comedy Experience of 2005. I didn't blog about that at the time, just briefly mentioning it in a subsequent blog, but at the time it was quite a blow.

I was at home in Cheddar, either just before or just after Christmas and presumably saw a link to the Daily Telegraph comedy round up of the year on Chortle and clicked the link. I had not had a spectacular 2005- I'd enjoyed the Edinburgh run (though there had been one performance that had gone down to near silence and I suspect the Telegraph were in that day) - but I was sure my own name would not feature in a best of. It never usually did even if i'd done something that had gone really well. I was at a sensitive time in my career, where I had spent a year or two trying to get back into solo stand up, something I had not enjoyed doing in the early 90s and I thought I had done a good job of being inventive and interesting with the format. I had sometimes managed to make a routine about not caring about yoghurt last 60 minutes and had also done these kind of routines in regular comedy clubs in front of audiences who did not know me, and usually make them laugh.

Anyway, it had been a shock to see, amongst the accolades , that the journalist had chosen to highlight the worst thing he'd seen in comedy that year - and remember in 2005 you could hae watched the likes of Tittybangbang and Balls of Steel- but instead the reviewer (who I don't think had mentioned the show at the time) waited five months to let the readers of the Telegraph know that Someone Likes Yoghurt was not only the worst thing he'd seen, but also made him question if Richard Herring had ever been funny.

It seemed unnecessarily cruel. Not only was I trying to reinvent myself and get used to performing alone and feeling a bit insecure about where my career might be going, my ex comedy partner was already being feted as the best stand up of his generation. Even had the journalist been at the one silent performance, surely as a reviewer he would have seen that I was at least attempting something daring and different, but no.

It didn't entirely ruin my Christmas but it wasn't a great thing to happen with so little warning and the timing might well have caused me to think everything was over and chuck the whole thing in.

Within a few days I had weathered the storm and realised that being the worst comedy according to the Daily Telegraph might not be the worst thing. Also you have to marvel at the fact that I had created a show, that was supposed to be at least a little bit irritating (if funny as well) that had so got under a journalist's skin that he was still talking about it five months later. I couldn't really count it as a success, but it didn't feel like such a massive failure.

Nonetheless it was a very nasty thing to write and had I been a rung or two lower on the ladder of self-worth it might have prompted me to give up or possibly something worse. I can still feel the impact and loneliness of the moment. It's only one person's opinion and perhaps it came with some agenda (often people react like this if your comedy has hit a nerve and maybe the reviewer was a Catholic or had at some point sexually molested a monkey- another routine in the show- or bathed in yoghurt and had felt kink-shamed).

I didn't give up comedy or living, but it is probably the abiding memory associated with that show.

It probably happens to everyone at some point (another reviewer called my ITV comedy drama "You Can Choose Your Friends" something like the worst thing that had ever been on TV, which again ignored Tittybangbang and Balls of Steel (also by me making these jokes I may be causing the same trauma to the creators of those terrible shows, so I can't really complain).

I know that in 1999 Stewart Lee, who had been doing his amazing stand up shows over the previous few years and which had done well, but not got the acclaim that would soon come to him, got a review that said something like "When is Stewart Lee going to finally fuck off and stop doing the Fringe?" I don't think it's a coincidence that he didn't do a stand up show at the Fringe for a few years after that - though when he returned, well the rest if comedy history.

Dara recalled sitting in the back of a cab with Stew at some point in the early Noughties, both feeling things were over for them. So these things happen and don't have much effect, though the wounds still throb decades on.

Interestingly Steve Bennett almost apologises for an unnecessary cruel review he gave to Jenny Eclair that she brings up in her autobiography and it's part of the journalist's job to be entertaining in their take-downs. Just like for comedians.

Was I ever funny? I question this enough myself without journalistic intervention and nothing anyone can say about me is as mean or frightening or bleak as the voice in my head that sometimes seems to want to harm me physically as well as mentally.

But yes, objectively, I have been funny sometimes. And if I haven't then even my career up to 2005 would have been a remarkable achievement - even more so now I've kept going for another 20 years.

I was funny today, at least. Will let you know when the episode is out!

RHLSTP Book Club with Eleanor Morton is now up here

Clip here

7985/20926

It's been non-stop for the last month and I've been battling a bug and in pain from twisted muscles and cut fingers. I've got four podcast records in the next three days, with Catie's birthday in between, so I could have done with some rest and recuperation. Sadly though we had to set off early to the Nickelodeon Adventure at Lakeside in Kent for a birthday party. I can't even tell you what lake it's beside or where in Kent it was. I just followed the sat nav.

I had thought it might be a theme park and we'd packed wellies and macs as it was pissing down. but it turned out it was all indoors in a big shopping centre.

The birthday boy was 3 so this was the perfect place for him to come. I am 57 and found a lot of it quite childish. Phoebe too was a bit too old for most of it, but it's a pretty cheap attraction and there's a couple of rides, some soft play, lots of buttons to push and a short 4D film involving the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and seats that judder and poke you pretty much at random and a jet that sprays water in your face. They didn't have enough 3D glasses for everyone and the 9 minute film had more walk outs than I've ever seen in a cinema, but it was maybe a bit too scary and weird for young kids. I stayed til the end, so they did not defeat me.

I did, however, sit in the cafe with my eyes closed for a good 30 minutes. Like my grandad useed to say I was resting my eyes, but I might have managed to catch up on some sleep. he cafe was called the Slime Cafe, but there was not slime anywhere and you couldn't even buy any slime. Phoebe wanted to complain to the manager. I was not sure anyone was managing this place. It just existed. Like a kind of swirling vortex of Hell. Why was I being punished by Satan...? Oh yeah, fair enough.

I watched the other parents at the attraction. I am not sure any of them were as tired or as old as me, but they all looked worn down and overwhelmed. The things we do for our children and all we get is bathed in the glow of love and the slime of fear. That's why it's called the Slime Cafe.

There was a chance to meet Chase from Paw Patrol. Luckily both my kids are beyond wanting to queue up for this kind of stuff. I would have had to question Chase on the wisdom of employing dogs to run your emergency services and whether, if you do decide dogs are the best option you should then opt to employ puppies rather than adult dogs. I am sure Chase has heard it all. And he was pretending to be mute to avoid the inevitable picking apart of the many plot holes in his terrible TV show. Also I think it might just have been a teenager in a costume.

I had thought we might get home by early afternoon, but our lunch at Prezzo took about an hour to arrive and I genuinely thought I might starve to death. Has anyone ever starved to death in a restaurant. That would be very bad publicity surely and I doubt the waiters would get a tip. After having some food though I felt just about awake enough to drive everyone home. But the day was gone and I was basically ready for bed.

The birthday boy had a good time though and Ernie at least had had some fun. And York City won 4-0 so not all was lost.

7986/20927

Not only did I have to prepare for two podcasts, travel to Birmingham, do two podcasts and then come home again (thankfully Bollings was driving) but this morning I had to pop into hospital for my annual scan to check that I haven't got any more cancers inside me. I am not complaining. I am not only lucky to seemingly have survived my scare, but to get these regular check ups so I'll get early warning of the next time my own body tries to kill me.

I'd been reading about Sir Chris Hoy's cancer, which just shows what a fucked up lottery of a piss take this horrible disease is. Little tubby Herring gets a bite out of his bollocks and three years work and healthy superman Chris Hoy is gifted terminal cancer.

I don't know Chris, but we've followed each other on Twitter for a while and I knew he was a fan of my stuff (as I am of his arguably even more impressive haul of gold medals). I'd hoped to interview him for RHLSTP in Edinburgh last year, but he'd privately confided in me about his cancer (though it sounded hopeful back then, or at least he made it sound like it was). He hadn't told many people and I think felt able to talk to me about it because of my own experience and I appreciated why that would be the case and kept his confidence. It's annoying that somebody else who knew did not do the same. I worried that he might think it was me who'd blabbed, but I didn't even tell Catie. 

Chris will be as inspirational with this as he has been in his sporting career. Amazing resilience and calm, especially given his family is also having to cope with his wife being diagnosed with MS.

So yes, I feel like the luckiest boy in the world to have just had testicular cancer. Cancer can 100% fuck off though. I don't care who knows that that's how I feel about it.

And though I'd been told to allow 90 minutes for my scan, I arrived early and was seen almost straight away and was almost out of there before my actual appointment time. I didn't feel like I'd pissed myself when the iodine got into my blood stream, but I did sense some warmth in my throat. I'll find out what delights my body has managed to grow in the last 12 months. It's already given me a bonus cysty bollock - I am hoping it might have fashioned me a replacement penis this time. The one I've got is knackered.

Great to be back at the Birmingham Town Hall. It was a more modest crowd than I've had at previous podcast records here, but still enough to have fun and my guests Ruth Husko and Josh Pugh were both great. Particularly Ruth given how little stage experience she's had. She's been reliably hilarious on Twitter over the last 3 years as @dank_ackroyd and I hoped the occasion wouldn't overwhelm her (as it has some much more seasoned performers), but she's an absolute natural. She's back to her proper job tomorrow, but I was trying to persuade her to take the leap into full time comedy writing and performance. Understandably she's a little reticent, but she's sharp, quick-witted, rude, attractive, regional! and funny and I think she could do very well.

She was a big comedy fan as a kid and used to write to us when she was 10 and asked Stewart to marry her. Luckily for her she had chosen to write to the only two men in showbiz who would not be interested in taking up that offer and Stewart respectfully turned her down. But I am oddly proud that of the limited fans we had in the 90s, there's such a high hit rate of talented comedians. Ruth reminds me of Christina Martin who is also for me, one of the funniest people in the country (check out Ashes to Admin by her alter ego Evie King) and also used to write to us regularly in the Lee and Herring days. My pride is avuncular and thankfully not creepy avuncular!

I am a terrible and immoral man, but by the low bar set by my showbiz contemporaries I am basically a saint. Though the Church has a pretty low bar too to be fair.

Josh Pugh has also blown up thanks to his social media videos, but he's also a terrific stand up and it was great to meet him properly and thoroughly enjoyed his free special too

(recorded in this same room).

It was another knackering day and I got home after midnight and didn't get to bed for another hour, but worth the trip. Doing it all again in London on Tuesday. Come along if you can.

I hope paid subs won’t be upset that I am not reading all that shit out! Hopefully be back with videos soon.