Can I Have My Ball Back?
Review of Richard Herring's book about his testicular cancer
Twenty years ago, Richard Herring
had a hit with Talking Cock, a stand-up show all about the penis that
was licensed around the world and spawned a successful book. It’s taken
him this long to come up with what might seem the obvious sequel, a book
about balls. And even then, it took him contracting testicular cancer,
at 53, to get the inspiration.
Can I Have My Ball Back? primarily charts his journey through the
diagnoses and treatment he underwent last year, but addressed with the
lightest of touches. Herring’s instinct is to make a joke about anything
– one coping mechanism was to make a ventriloquist’s doll that looked
like a swollen bollock for his online series – but occasionally the
reminder of his mortality becomes acute, especially when he considers
how much of his children’s formative years he might miss out on. The
idea he could be replaced in his wife Catie’s affections played much
more for laughs as he imagines some smarmy mustachioed lothario quaffing
his precious single-malt whiskey.
Anyone going through similar experiences – of the cancer treatment,
that is, not visualisation of a wife’s future seducer – is likely to
find both solace and comic relief in the frankness and wit of Herring’s
descriptions. His honesty stretches from describing the very male
reluctance to have the anomaly he spotted seen to (even though he was
once part of a campaign encouraging men to do just that) to a form of
survivors’ guilt that he got off lightly from his scrape with cancer
compared to others.
He actually makes losing a bollock remarkably reassuring. For far
from being a death sentence, testicular cancer has a 98 per cent
survival rate – a statistic Herring wishes he’d known from the start –
and his chemotherapy was a minor inconvenience rather than a
life-changing upheaval. He even manages to film Taskmaster’s Champion Of
Champions soon after treatment, and credits cancer with extending his
life, as now he pays at least some attention to his health. And there’s
extra freedom in his shorts whenever he exercises.
Nor does he consider that being a monoballer makes him any less than a
man, under that very primitive definition of masculinity which is again
interrogated with a very light touch. Between Herring’s first-hand
experiences are chapters of ball-based facts. These are normally based
on their metaphorical links to fortitude – despite being famously not
very pain-resilient at all – which is why Hitler having only one of them
was such a powerful wartime burn. These sections are similar in tone to
Talking Cock, in mocking the mythology around the testicles – as well
as containing more elaborate euphemisms for the love spuds than you’ll
find outside Roger’s Profanisaurus. And reminding us of the most
important fact through all of this: that balls are inherently funny.
The comic is also prone to going off on tangents – no surprise if
you’re aware of his work online – and describes in some detail the
monumental futility of his quest to clear a field near him of every last
stone (and manages to get the reader invested in that activity) or the
discordant jingle of a advert for reclining chairs.
Even in his retelling of the cancer story, Herring admits his
comedian sensibilities were always telling him there’d be material in
his experiences, joking that maybe a small body part was a price worth
paying for inspiration. And he was quite right: there’s great material
in here, underpinned with real emotions and with every absurdity, both
his own and the treatment’s, offered up for ridicule.
