On occasion I like to embark on an evening of culture and sophistication. Other times, like last night, I like nothing more than blasphemy and knob gags. I've been looking forward to this for some time. Since embarking on my Twitter obsession and discovering Richard Herring hadn't died in a unfortunate éclair incident and was touring in fact. So Thursday 19th March 2009 at Liverpool's Unity Theatre myself and my ever tolerant wife, having Shanghaied my mother into caring for our daughter while we went out to enjoy ourselves, met a couple of friends and laughed our socks off and wiped tears of joy from our cheeks.
Herring bounded onto the floor like an enthusiastic kitten. Actually, given his current girth and hairiness maybe Ewok would be more appropriate. Not one of the cute ones like Wicket or the baby in the basket who shields his eyes when C3PO does his 'Vader impression, maybe more a Chief Chirpa. Whenever I've seen him on television he's always appeared sprightly, even when being melancholic, though as this is around the midpoint of the tour with material he first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in August 2008, I was expecting him to be more subdued. His Empire destroying skills had clearly not waned through touring however.
Hitting the floor running with the single greatest piece of blasphemy I've ever been condemned to Hell for enjoying, we were taken on a journey through Herring's adolescence as he examined his inability to commit, his childish behaviour, and his obsession with masturbation and the need to catalogue it. He read passages from the young Richard's diary, much of which will be familiar to anyone who has been aged between 13 and 17 and written bad poetry, and talked of his upbringing and the effect being the son of the Headmaster during this adolescence has had on his psyche.
We learned amongst other things of his early obsession with comedy and breasts. His fleeting moment of coolness when Dexy's Midnight Runners released Geno. His first love, and meeting her again after twenty years. His uncontested genius at Maths and History. His freakishly small hands and their potential uses.
Sometimes pushing the envelope and referencing current news events, Herring managed to draw a few sharp intakes of breath before the guilt edged chuckles forced their way out. Mostly though the show was a considered retrospective of his formative years rather than a barrage of jokes or satires, and as such it felt like sitting down with an old friend recounting the stupid things you did in your youth. Only this friend was smarter and funnier than you and had you known each other as youths he would never have associated with the likes of you. Obviously.
Closing with a prolonged conversation between himself now at forty-one and at sixteen, he juxtaposed his ambitions then with his position now and ends with a touch of reverence for his father, before one last punchline to send us out happy.
On exiting the venue there was the opportunity for a brief meet and greet while Herring sold merchandise and collected donations for Scope (at this point I should say a big thank you to Mal and Tiff who in offering us a lift home allowed the bus fare to go to a worthier cause). Maybe I won't go to Hell. Maybe just a few millennia in Purgatory.
Richard Herring's The Headmaster's Son is touring until the end of April. Details can be found at http://www.richardherring.com/
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