https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/edinburgh-fringe-arthur-smith-richard-herring-bridget-christie-and-others-remember-their-finest-festival-moments-vbjmmnh7z
This is what was in the paper
Richard Herring
In 1988 I discovered the tiny
baked-potato shop Tempting Tattie at the top of Jeffrey Street. I would
always recommend it in interviews, but the owners never seemed to care.
In 2009 I took my audience to the shop to see if we could break it. I
arrived with 100 customers, who waited patiently for service, and the
owner sort of found it funny, but, like a true Edinburgh citizen during
the festival, was mainly angry he had to do all this extra work.
This is what I wrote:
I’ve been coming to the Fringe since 1987 and I think it was in my second year I discovered the tiny baked potato shop “The Tempting Tattie” at the top of Jeffrey St. It’s huge and cheap potatoes kept me alive in the early days and it became a tradition to go back there at least once every year. I favoured the medium (huge) with orange Cheddar and Mango Chutney and hoped that one day that would be named “The Richard Herring”. Whenever a paper asked me for restaurant recommends over the next 25 years (as they did often) I would always say The Tempting Tattie, but the owners never seemed to know who I was. Eventually the grumpy but lovely owner realised who I was and said I could have free potatoes. It’s probably the main benefit I have accrued from all my years in showbiz, but I felt self-conscious about taking him up on it.
In 2009 after the lunchtime recording of the Collings and Herrin podcast, we encouraged our audience and podcast listeners to all descend on the shop at the same time to see if we could break it. It was just after lunch, when usually the owner would be winding things up. I arrived with the audience to find the queue already snaking down the hill. There must have been at least 100 customers in all and they waited patiently for service and for the owner to put in another batch of potatoes.
He sort of found it funny, but was mainly put out that he had to do all this extra work when he was about to get to a quiet time of the day. He pretended to head butt me. Even though I had brought him a day’s takings in one hour. It made it funnier that he was angry with me, but it was a beautiful thing to see.
Someone made a video -
I had that moustache for my stand up show.
I hardly ever got involved in Edinburgh happenings cos they usually happened late and I liked to go to bed. But 100+ nerds eating cheese and mango chutney baked potatoes provided by an annoyed man was a wonderful thing to make happen.
He never named the potato after me
