Richard Herring

I turned 40 three weeks ago. Even as I write those words I still refuse to believe them. Me? 40? It doesn’t make sense. My calendar must be malfunctioning. I still feel like I’m 20… unless I am walking up some stairs. I still behave as if I am 20. In fact I behave more like I am 20 than I did when I was 20. So I can’t be ... read more

This week I am at the prestigious “Just For Laughs” festival in Montreal. It’s like a gigantic comedy trade fair where comedians come from all over the world to do sets as short as seven minutes in front of comedy executives from Hollywood, in the hope of landing the part of the kooky neighbour in a new sit-com.

Comedians, executives and journalists are nearly all put up in the same ... read more

I chanced across the end of the film Logan's Run on TV and suddenly I realised why I am 39 (for nearly a whole week longer) and have never been married. It's nothing to do with the theme of that film (which is of course that once you get to 30 you are killed by the state - not a bad idea, it's a shame the film never had the ... read more

Last October, I decided to have another shot at eradicating my beer belly. It is a belly that has been with me my whole life, long before the first beer ever crossed my lips. Even when relatively thin, there has always been a protuberance in my midriff. Always a barrel, never a six-pack.

With nine months before my 40th birthday I saw this as a kind of reverse pregnancy. In ... read more

It’s been such a busy year, what with script-writing, followed by filming, followed by touring that I have had very limited time to see my friends.

In the last couple of weeks I have caught up with people I haven’t seen for five or six months. Two of them have commented on how grey my hair is, which confirms that all this work has sent my hair white, if not ... read more

'I’ll have to be careful what I say around you, you’ll put me in one of your skits!'

It’s a refrain that every comedy writer will have regularly heard, from relatives, acquaintances, strangers on the bus. Yet this statement is usually made by someone so unexceptional and unamusing that they wouldn’t even make an effective straight man. I considered writing a sketch about the phenomenon, in which I ... read more

My tour took me to Belfast this week, just as old enemies were almost shaking hands and getting on with a new life. I don’t think it was directly as a result of my visit. Though my material about Jesus does tend to unite Protestants and Catholics in hatred of me, so you never know.

I had been to a stag night the day before and was a little tired ... read more

I am now well into my international tour and have just got back from the slightly surreal Hull, Paris, Milan section that I mentioned last month. Of course the Italians call the city Milano, which got me vaguely wondering why foreigners tend to change the names of towns that have already been given a perfectly good name by the locals.

English speakers must have arrived in this town and ... read more

People! They can make you laugh one minute and then fill you with fear and hopelessness the next. I was walking back to the tube from the gym. A car was waiting at the traffic lights, with a half litre bottle of Volvic water on its roof.

It was a mildly surreal sight, but as the driver window was slightly open it was possible that the woman at the ... read more

I am just about to embark on an international stand-up tour which will keep me busy until June 11th. It is a slightly surreal itinerary, which sees me playing Hull one day, then Paris the next, then Milan, then Keswick. It’s as if someone wants to give me the illusion of having a glamorous life, but then bring me crashing down to earth. Not wishing to be rude to ... read more

I have been unusually busy filming a comedy drama that I wrote for ITV (It’s called “You Can Choose Your Friends” – hope you’ll watch when it’s on. The three of you could make all the difference). On Sunday, my day off, I fell asleep on my sofa. It is nice to have a lazy day when you have earned it. Too often over the last four years ... read more

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the idle classes used to pay one pence, old money, to visit the Bedlam hospital so they could gawp and laugh at the zany antics of the mentally ill patients who were incarcerated there.

Thankfully we live in more enlightened times and understand that charging people to gape at the eccentricities of the psychologically impaired is morally wrong. It’s much more progressive to shut ... read more