Robert Jackman

How did Richard Herring become the comedy podcast king?

Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, or RHLSTP, is built on a fanbase of chunky bearded men who stay away from social situations – and it's huge

What does it mean to be a successful comic? Richard Herring isn’t sure. He’s been a ‘professional funnyman’ for nearly 30 years, yet — as he’s the first to admit — he’s largely unknown beyond the circuit. Even then he has doubts. ‘I’m never in those top-100 stand-up lists,’ he says, when we meet in Soho ahead of his new tour. He admits his old shows have largely been forgotten and he hasn’t been to an awards ceremony for decades. As promo strategies go, it’s a curious one. But then Herring is an odd one. In the late 1990s, he was part of a new wave of Oxbridge-educated fame-hungry young comics who exploded on to television. But while his contemporaries — Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris — thrived in the limelight, Herring made a quick splash before disappearing from the schedules almost entirely. He hasn’t made a BBC TV show this millennium. Yet at 52, Herring is more successful than ever. Or at least in some ways. He’s got more work than ever before and can sell out a West End theatre in a few hours (on a Monday night no less). He’s worked with everyone from Stephen Fry to Jonathan Ross, and from Mary Beard to Louis Theroux. And now, apparently, Paul McCartney wants to come on his self-produced podcast. Yet he’s still not on television. Does it bother him? Not really. ‘I was never really one for celebrity parties,’ he says. Nor did he enjoy ‘constantly battering at the door’ of television executives. ‘In your twenties, everyone’s ambitious and is fighting against each other. I was constantly worried about work,’ he says. He prefers his life now: financially stable and settled down in Hertfordshire with a family and a dog. To understand how things changed, you have to go back to the early 2000s.

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