Richard Keith Herring (born 12 July 1967) is an English comedian and writer whose early work includes the comedy double act Lee and Herring (alongside Stewart Lee). He is described by The British Theatre Guide as "one of the leading hidden masters of modern British comedy".
Towards the end of the double act, Herring also worked as a writer, producing four plays. After Lee and Herring went their separate ways he co-wrote the sitcom Time Gentlemen Please, but quickly returned to performance with concept-driven one-man shows like Talking Cock, Hitler Moustache and Christ on a Bike as well as regular circuit stand-up. Herring has created fourteen of these stand-up shows since 2001, performing them for eleven consecutive years from 2004 to 2014 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, with annual tours and a final performance recorded for DVD. His 2016–17 show was a 'best of' tour, drawing from these shows.
Herring is recognised as a pioneer of comedy podcasting, initially with broadcaster Andrew Collins on The Collings and Herrin Podcast and subsequently with high-profile comedians and celebrities such as Dawn French, Michael Palin and Stephen Fry on Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast. He has maintained a daily blog called Warming Up since 25 November 2002. In September 2024 he started publishing the blog (and other material) on Substack where he has 10000+ subscribers.
Contents
Early life
Herring was born on 12 July 1967 in Pocklington, East Yorkshire, and grew up in Cheddar, Somerset. He is the youngest of three children. He attended The Kings of Wessex School, where his father was the headmaster and maths teacher. This later formed the basis of his 2008 stand-up show, The Headmaster's Son. Herring's mother was also a teacher. The 2007 ITV comedy drama You Can Choose Your Friends, which he wrote and also starred in, was based on his family. Some of the same characters later featured in the Radio 4 series "Relativity".
Herring was a student at St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he wrote and performed for a comedy troupe known as the Seven Raymonds as well as the Oxford Revue. He attained a 2:1 in History.
Career
Lee and Herring
Between 1992 and 2000, Richard was half of the stand-up comedy double act with Stewart Lee. Their television work included Fist of Fun, Festival of Fun, and This Morning With Richard Not Judy, and they had been collaborating on stage and radio projects since the 1980s.
Lee and Herring wrote material for Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci's On the Hour in 1991 and the duo contributed to the creation of the character that was to be Alan Partridge. In 1992 and 1993, they wrote and performed Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World for Radio 4. For Radio 1, they wrote and performed one series of Fist of Fun in 1993, remaking it for television in 1995 and 1996. They hosted a series on Radio 1 in 1994 and 1995, called Lee and Herring. A final television partnership with Lee, This Morning With Richard Not Judy, ran for 18 episodes over two series until being cancelled "as a result of BBC management reshuffles".
Solo work
Herring has written and performed in fourteen one-man shows, eleven of them in consecutive years. A Herring show typically starts with a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, continues with an extensive UK tour and ends with a recorded performance for DVD.
For radio, Herring co-wrote and presented the history-based sketch show That Was Then, This Is Now. For television, he co-wrote Al Murray's sitcom Time Gentlemen Please. He also contributed to the third series of Little Britain as script editor.
In 2005, he presented a chat show called Heads Up with Richard Herring on the Pokerzone channel, in which he interviewed professional poker players and celebrities about their careers and their love of the game. There were 10 episodes in total.
In February 2007, filming began on Herring's comedy drama You Can Choose Your Friends. As well as writing the script, he also acted alongside Gordon Kennedy, Claire Skinner, Rebecca Front, Sarah-Jane Potts, Robert Daws, Anton Rodgers and Julia McKenzie. The show was broadcast on ITV on 7 June 2007.
In January 2008 he began the Collings and Herrin podcast with Andrew Collins. They celebrated their second anniversary with a live "100th" podcast (it was actually the 105th recording) at the Leicester Square Theatre. On 30 January 2010 the pair began a tenure of sitting in for Adam and Joe on BBC Radio 6 Music on Saturdays mornings, a slot they occupied for more than a year.
Herring's 2008 stand-up set The Headmaster's Son earned four 5-star reviews and several 4-star reviews. The set covers his experience growing up in The Kings of Wessex School in Somerset where his father worked as headmaster and how this may have been the origin of his fondness for telling puerile jokes. The show was seen by critics as a thoughtful look at his upbringing, and his relationship with his father, to whom the show is dedicated.
Herring launched his show, Hitler Moustache in 2009 to see if he "could reclaim the toothbrush moustache for comedy – it was Chaplin's first, then Hitler ruined it." The show discusses broader issues, such as fascism and the British National Party. Herring and some of his contemporaries, including Dave Gorman, were angered when material from his show was misrepresented in a Guardian column by critic Brian Logan.
Blogs, podcasts and internet
On 25 November 2002 Herring started his blog, Warming Up, as a way to overcome writer's block. Some ideas recorded in Warming Up have been used in his live shows. The first year of his blog is collected in two books, Bye Bye Balham and The Box Lady and Other Pesticles. In the autumn of 2024 the blog also became available on Substack where he has over 10,000 subscribers.
On 12 October 2009, Herring recorded the first episode of As It Occurs To Me, a weekly radio-style stand-up and sketch show made for the Internet. It stars himself alongside Emma Kennedy, Dan Tetsell and Christian Reilly. It currently stands at 18 episodes and 5 bonus mini-episodes. It was nominated for best internet show at the 2010 Sony Awards, though it failed to place. On 7 February 2011, As It Occurs to Me won the first Chortle Internet award On 20 March 2012 he retained it. In 2017, As It Occurs To Me returned as a six-episode web series.
In 2011, Herring began playing himself at snooker for an audio podcast called "Me1 vs Me2 Snooker". On 28 July 2016 he performed at the Tempting Failure extreme art festival In 2020 he started playing this with 32 personas on Twitch and appeared on Comedians: Home Alone on BBC2 in July with an edited frame of Me1 vs Me2.
In 2012, Herring recorded the first 16 episodes of the long-running Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast with guests including Tim Minchin, Herring's comedy partner Stewart Lee, Adam Buxton, David Mitchell and Armando Iannucci. It was nominated for a Sony Award for Best Comedy alongside a list of BBC produced comedy shows in 2013. The show won the Bronze Award. In 2013, Herring won the Chortle Award for the podcast, which again won the award in 2014. In May and June 2013 he recorded nine podcasts with guests including Stephen Fry, Russell Brand and Mary Beard. His interview with Stephen Fry was covered by national and international news media including the BBC and Sky News when Fry revealed a recent suicide attempt. The series continued with Harry Shearer, Eddie Izzard and David Cross.
On 17 November 2013, he recorded the first episode of a six-part internet stand-up, sketch and interview show Richard Herring's Meaning of Life, structured around the philosophical concepts of 'Creation', 'the Paranormal', 'Love', 'Death', 'Good & Evil' and 'the Shape of Things To Come', the episode being broadcast online between February 2014 and early 2015.
Personal life
Herring was formerly in a relationship with the actress Julia Sawalha, some years after joking on Fist of Fun that "My ideal woman has the head of Julia Sawalha and the body of Julia Sawalha."
Before Sawalha he dated the actress Catherine Shepherd as revealed by Sally Phillips in 2022 on Herring's RHLSTP 409 podcast. He also dated Kelly Marcel and Sally Phillips.
In April 2012, Herring married author and comedian Catie Wilkins. They had their first child, a daughter, in February 2015, followed by a son in October 2017.
Herring has raised money for Scope since 2003, and ran the London Marathon in aid of the charity in 2004 as well as the Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon in 2011, 2013 and 2014. In January 2011 he was nominated for a JustGiving Life Time Achievement Award for his extensive work in helping to raise money, awareness and support for Scope. In 2012 he was made a Patron of Scope.
In 2010 he was made a patron of Humanists UK (formerly The British Humanist Association) and said: "It's the 21st century and it's time the human race accepted that we're flying this plane and no one out there is going to save us from crashing it. So let's work together, hey?"
In February 2021 he had an orchiectomy to remove a cancerous testicle, undergoing one shot of chemotherapy a month later. In November 2021 he ran the Hertfordshire Half Marathon and raised £30,000 for the hospitals that treated his condition. His book about the experience Can I Have My Ball Back? was published in October 2022. In April 2022 it was announced that Herring had become an ambassador for Movember. In June 2026 he stated that he was being treated for hairy cell leukaemia.
Collections
The University of Kent holds material relating to Herring's career as part of the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive. The Richard Herring Collection contains performance scripts, promotional items, published material, and digital documents and scans.
Body of work
Other writing
Warming Up blog (2002–present)
Guardian How To Write (contributor) edited by Philip Oltermann The Guardian ISBN 0-85265-138-4 ISBN 978-0-85265-138-4 (2009)
The Atheist Guide to Christmas Contributor (Editor Ariane Sherine) The Friday Project ISBN 978-0-00-732261-9 (2009)
Shouting at the Telly (Contributor) (Editor John Grindrod) Faber and Faber ISBN 0-571-24802-0 ISBN 978-0-571-24802-5 (2009)
Roger's Profanisaurus – Das Krapital Introduction Dennis Publishing ISBN 978-1-907232-90-9 (2010)
Metro newspaper weekly column (2012–2016)
Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who (contributor) edited by Steve Berry Matador (2012)
Dead Funny (Contributor) (Editors Robin Ince and Johnny Mains) Salt Publishing ISBN 9781907773761 (2014)
Goodbye Europe: Writers and Artists Say Farewell (contributor) W&N ISBN 9780751574395 ISBN 978-1409177548 2017
Slaughterhouse 5: 50th Anniversary Edition (contributor) Vintage ISBN 178487485X ISBN 978-1784874858 2019
Zippy and Me by Ronnie Le Drew (foreword) Unbound ISBN 178352698X ISBN 978-1783526987 2019
Awards and recognition
Chortle Awards Internet Award 2011
Chortle Awards Internet Award 2012
Chortle Awards Internet Award 2013
Radio Academy Awards Best Comedy – Bronze, 2013 (Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast)
Chortle Awards Internet Award 2014
Chortle Awards Internet Award 2018
Chortle Awards Legend of Lockdown 2021
British Podcast Awards Nominated Best Entertainment and Best Interview 2023