Emergency Questions by Richard Herring
Book review by Steve Bennett
Regular listeners to Richard Herring’s
Leicester Square Theatre Podcast will require no further introduction
to his ‘emergency questions’. Seemingly designed as last-ditch gambits
to avoid awkward silences when he interviews his celebrity guests, these
off-the-wall icebreakers have come to define the show, steering the
conversation into bizarre territory, and ensuring that RHLSTP avoids the
same old talk-show ruts of well-worn anecdotes.
So why compile 500 of them – definitely a challenging target, harder
than it might seem – into a book? Well, the prosaic answer is to help
fund Herring’s prodigious internet output, which he otherwise offers for
free. But there’s plenty in it for the reader, too, to either consider
their own answers or – as the sleeve notes suggest – act as ‘perfect
ice-breakers at parties, own dates and during job interviews’.
Indeed, older readers might recall 80s party board game Scruples in
which players have to guess each other’s moral standing in various
hypothetical situations. That was a hit, and based on far less
creativity than this book.
Herring’s Emergency Questions range from silly ‘would you rather’
choices (a tit that dispenses talcum, powder or a finger that travels
through time?) to those which might prompt a hitherto forgotten story:
‘What is the most alarming thing that has entered or exited your body’.
Then there’s straight-out trivia or unanswerable mysteries.
It’s said that dons interviewing for esoteric Oxbridge courses like
philosophy will ask questions with no possible right answer, just to
observe the candidate’s thought process under pressure. Perhaps in years
to come, would-be students will be invited to grapple with such tricky
moral conundrums as ‘does sex with a robot count as cheating on your
partner?’ or ‘who would win in a fight between the shark from Jaws and
Jaws from James Bond?’
Herring offers his own answers to a lot of them, some are straight-up
gags, some revealing (for example, he once tried to eat a whole pack of
butter to win a £50 bet, and once fell victim to an estate agent
conman), and some commentary on how you can use whatever answer given
trick the interviewee. Ha!
In short, Emergency Questions offers 500 surprisingly diverting
talking points. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to
considering whether Stilgoe or The Lionheart would make the best final
guest for my dinner party comprising only ‘Richards’…
http://www.chortle.co.uk/books/2017/07/13/37053/emergency_questions_by_richard_herring?rss
Buy book at http://www.gofasterstripe.com/eq
