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Telegraph Review of The Headmaster's Son

Richard Herring - The Headmaster's Son at the Leicester Square Theatre

Richard Herring, one half of 1990s duo Lee and Herring, digs up the past with a pitiless comic examination of his own childhood.


by Tom Chivers
20 Feb 2009
Richard Herring - The Headmaster's Son at the Leicester Square Theatre
Herring boldly examines his own childhood and teenage years

In the 1990s Richard Herring formed, with Stewart Lee, one of the finest comedy double-acts of the decade. Like all great partnerships they thrived on their differences. Lee, laconic and faintly saturnine, was a stark contrast to the hyperactive, eager Herring.

Having gone their separate ways in solo standup a decade or so ago now, it is interesting to see how their personas have remained the same. Lee, though older and heavier, is still poised and catlike, while Herring – now in his forties – is eerily reminiscent of a Labrador puppy.

Alone, untempered by Lee's calming influence, Herring's unbridled energy can be tiring, even grating. And the show is so much about himself – schoolboy memories, self-analysis, et cetera – that he opens himself up to accusations of solipsism.

Somehow, though, he holds it all together. The show is about his childhood, and some of the odd little vignettes are both hilarious and strangely touching. The best come when he reads through his teenage diary, allowing him to mock his own adolescent bombast and self-pity with wounding accuracy.

His material has a universality, certainly for male members of the audience – bringing back memories of the fiery, hot-cheeked embarrassment of trying to talk to girls, say, or the pitiful attempts at youthful rebellion. Belching during a school assembly seems to have been as far as Herring was prepared to go.

On the whole, advancing age seems to be treating Herring kindly (although his startling hair-and-beard combination doesn't sit well on a slightly tubby man in his middle years), and he has written a charming, warm, funny show with some splendid surrealist asides. But, as good as he is, it's hard not to miss the glory days of This Morning With Richard Not Judy. What chance a reunion, you wonder?