The List reviews Oh Frig I'm 50

Richard Herring: Oh Frig, I'm 50!

• Brian Donaldson
• 18 August 2017

Tackling TV puppets and terrorism, this decade series still reaps very funny rewards

A decade after lamenting his entrance into decade number five, Richard Herring rips through a superb new set bemoaning his half-century landmark. Comparing and contrasting Oh Fuck, I'm 40! and Oh Frig, I'm 50!, you'd be hard-pushed to spot a world of difference between the shows. They're both delivered with a passion for the petty and fuelled by an irritation with and despair at his fellow humans, Herring never wanting to be seen as flawed as other people but giving off the impression that he might be the biggest fool of them all.

Having given an attempted heckler the shortest of shrifts, he ploughs on with typically off-kilter and blindsiding material about the decreasing quality of his orgasms (sneezing gives him just as much pleasure these days), how he would handle a confrontation with ISIS, and how the phrase 'bag for life' gives him a little chuckle these days.

In the last decade, major events have occurred in his life, with Herring getting married (to fellow comedian Catie Wilkins) and becoming a father (a second child is on the way soon), offering him plenty new opportunities for his pernickety imagination to run riot. The Penguin Slide Race Game he plays on stage seems to be there purely for his own enjoyment, while he confesses all too readily to having a middle-age crush on a TV puppet.