5 minutes with... Richard Herring

Richard Herring

Richard Herring

Comedian Richard Herring has created a new 10-part weekly stand-up and sketch show, which will only be available via the internet.

As It Occurs To Me can be downloaded from iTunes and the British Comedy Guide (www.comedy.org.uk) as an audio podcast.

Herring, 42, made his name in the 1990s as a double act with comedy partner Stewart Lee before going solo.

THIS IS CLEARLY AN EXPERIMENTAL AVENUE FOR COMEDY. WHAT'S THE THINKING BEHIND IT?

I was frustrated by the time and effort it took to get radio and TV bosses to commit to an idea, and then the censorship, interference and restrictions that were imposed upon you once you'd jumped through all those hoops. I realised that it is now possible to make your own show and have complete autonomy over content and not have to edit it down to fit a time slot. If I have 55 minutes worth of good ideas one week, then the audience can hear them all, in their entirety. Or bad ones, of course. This is the way entertainment is going. People aren't watching the same four channels all the time, and if they are, it's in their own time, on DVD or Sky Plus or the internet or whatever it may be. Much as we all love the BBC, it's taking its time embracing the changing habits of the audience, and that's hopefully where this is going to plug that gap.

YOUR PODCASTS WITH ANDREW COLLINS HAVE BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL. WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE APPEAL TO LISTENERS?

Post-Sachsgate [controversy with Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross], I think most normal people have felt patronised by the dilution and weakening of comedy. They can find comedy with balls in live comedy clubs and on the internet. Downloaded shows give people the freedom to choose. If you don't like it you don't have to listen to it, but also the broadcaster is not employed by anyone and so cannot be sacked. It makes for a much more fertile ground for creating comedy without having to second guess possible moral outrage.

COULD THIS BE QUITE A LUCRATIVE AVENUE FOR COMEDY?

If I can sell 400 tickets a week, I will actually make about the same amount of money as I would by doing a radio show for the BBC. If I can sell 100 tickets, then I should at least break even. It's really not about the money, though, which is probably lucky, it's about creating something funny that I can be proud of, and taking the risk. There's every chance with such a fast turnaround that it might be sh*t. My ultimate goal is to create an internet empire putting out sketch shows, stand-up, sitcoms and films which will destroy television and radio as broadcast media. But for the moment it would just be nice if a few people turned up to watch on a Monday night.

WE'RE LIVING IN THE AGE OF THE DOUBLE-ACT AND SKETCH SHOW. DO YOU THINK THAT IF LEE AND HERRING HAD COME ALONG A DECADE LATER, YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN AS HUGE AS ARMSTRONG AND MILLER OR MITCHELL AND WEBB ARE TODAY?

Perhaps. I don't know if we'd even have wanted that. We managed to get away with a lot of things because nobody important was watching. We were doing psychedelic stuff in really unexpected and unlikely time slots. We got away with things that there's no way we could have got away with if we were huge stars and all over the papers the way the likes of Little Britain are. We were just making these psychedelic little shows that our fans seem to like. The nice thing is, a lot of our fans were at school when we first came on the scene, but now they're grown-ups and professional people and they have fond memories of what we used to do. So it might be the case that over time, more people will discover what we used to do (YouTube's a good place to start) and we might be recognised a bit more, but it's not something I spend too much time worrying about.

SO THERE WON'T BE A LEE AND HERRING REUNION?

I would doubt it. We're still great friends, but we're doing our own thing. Stu would have hated it if we'd had to deal with the whole mega-star thing. He's not the sort of guy who wants people bothering him in the street and asking for autographs. And I think we'd struggle with the whole double-act thing after all these years on our own. It's not impossible, but I think there'd have to be a lot of people asking for it to happen. It's nice that because we never quite made it over that hump, never became quite big enough to be in a position to sell out, that people still remember us fondly.

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