Journalism

Email questionnaire for twoboysandtheiregos.com

1. In terms of approach what is the major difference between your stand-up writing and your playwriting?

Well I suppose they both start the same way in that you have an idea that engages and excites you and then you start to write about it and see where it takes you. But they are very different disciplines. With stand up you can have an idea that lasts ten seconds and stands alone or a 40 minute routine on oen subject, but with a play you are looking to explore in a framework and have to think about your characters and so on. You have a framework and a character for stand up but it is much looser and you can suddenly shoot off to something different if you wish and of course it’s much more interactive. I used to think stand up was a bit limited which is why I concentrated on plays for s a while, but actually stand up gives more freedom than almost any art form and is the only performance based thing where you can do entirely what you want with no one else like directors or producers or actors to consider. The audience decide if it’s good or not, but an individual audience might not like something that another one does so even that only affects things if something never works. With a stand up show that doesn’t have a theme I will tend just to bring together all the stuff that I think is funny at the moment (and it usually ends up having a theme), but with a play or a more structured one man show you have to plan a lot more and it’s a lot harder to write.

2. When you and Stewart Lee first emerged in the early nineties there was a definite trend towards comedians appearing in pairs (Newman and Baddiel, Reeves and Mortimer, French and Saunders and all that lot). What do you think most separated your work (in that period) from that of your contemporaries?

I think, certainly once we got going we concentrated more on the relationship between the two of us. Newman and Baddiel were essentially two stand up doing a show together, but didn’t really do a double act – and it was quite rare that the two of them performed together and mainly in character. Reeves and Mortimer were doing their crazy stuff but you didn’t get much idea of them as people outside the cartoon characters they portrayed (not a criticism – they were amazing). French and Saunders were going a long time before us, but I don’t think they really explored the double act relationship too much. A lot of our comedy – certainly in the live shows – came from us talking about stuff from our different perspectives and bullying one another and revealing stuff about ourselves and each other. Although the characters weren’t really us (probably slightly exaggerated versions of ourselves at 18) there was a lot of us in them and at our best we used true facts about ourselves and our frustrations with one another. I think had we carried on working together this would have been even moreso the case. I think we were just getting to an interesting place and that the older we got and the more true to ourselves we became the better the act would have been. More theatrical and more philosophical. I am writing a comedy drama about a double act (not Lee and Herring, a made up act that will obviously be informed by my own experience but it isn’t about what happened to us) so I will be able to examine this odd relationship in more detail.

3. Which do you find more rewarding collaborative writing or doing all of the work yourself?

I think both are rewarding in different ways, but it depends who you’re working with. It’s more financially rewarding working on your own of course. It can be frustrating working with someone else. Me and Stew had a very similar humour and idea of what we wanted and we still argued a lot and I think the older you get the more you want to do things your own way. But having another point of view and someone else to be responsible to can help you get stuff done quicker. I probably prefer writing on my own which is why I usually do now. But I do like the team thing and so even if I am writing a play or sitcom on my own it’s great to get input from others. But I suppose the main thing is that the more people there are working on something the more chance that people will suggest stuff that is outside the parameters of what you want to do. I have strong ideas on what is and isn’t funny and sometimes it can be difficult to make people understand that you think something they have suggested is hackneyed or rubbish. So that’s why it’s better doing stuff alone. But writing on your own can be very lonely – really found this when writing my book – and you’re not meeting anyone, so it’s probably good to have a bit of a balance. And I go through big periods where I get nothing done on my own. So you know there’s no definite answer.

4. Much of your comedy is based around an effort to answer the big questions (the entirety of Lionel Nimrod’s Inexplicable World for instance and more recently Talking Cock). How much do you feel that popular comedy has moved away from being thought provoking and back towards enforcing mildly-entertaining and non-threatening stereotypes?

I think probably popular comedy has always been like that. Comedy fulfils a lot of roles and many people just want to have comedy that makes them laugh and nothing else – which I suppose is fair enough. I am kind of surprised at comics who are happy just doing jokes, mainly because after a while you understand how those formulas work and you’d think they would become bored and frustrated themselves. But there have always been thoughtful comedians and there’s a place for them, but it would probably be annoying if everyone was doing the same kind of stuff. And you have to have balance. Stuff that’s just thought provoking with no gags is as bad as stuff that is just loads of schoolyard gags. I suppose I do the stuff I do to keep it interesting for myself and I do tend to change what I am doing year on year, which makes it more difficult to build up an audience. I think a lot of the popular comedy at the moment is clever and interesting and pushing back boundaries if only a little bit. There’s a lot of crap of course, made by people who don’t seem to have thought for a second about what they’re doing, but there’s lots of good stuff out there.

5. One recurring item that appears in your writing is your Gameboy. Do you think that future Freudian critics will be able to transfer your love of the device in to a penis issue? Or, is a Gameboy sometimes just a Gameboy?

I have no control over what the Freudian critics of the future will say about me. I feel probably nothing. But as I also write about my penis a lot I think people will be able to see the difference. The games I play on the gameboy tend to be cerebral like Scrabble and stuff rather than violent or sexual too. In any case I have a PSP now.

6. There is a deeply sympathetic edge to your writing and you have never been afraid to exploit personal loneliness or personal failing to comic effect. How do you manage to keep the balance of humour and self-deprecation away from self-pity?

Well I hope I manage that. I have always thought it is important to make myself the ultimate victim and idiot of my own comedy and I don’t think you can have a perspective on other people until you have an idea about your own failings. So as often as not my own anger at the ridiculousness of a subject will also reveal the stupidity of my own position. I think my religious stuff for example does the job of showing up the hypocrisy and idiocy of others, but also highlights the weakness in my own philosophy as well as my obsession with the subject which is a bit suspect. So it’s a question of keeping stuff in perspective and being careful to laugh at oneself without becoming self indulgent. But I am fascinated by loneliness and depression and how to overcome them. I suppose the show I did that mostly in was the Hercules one, which is ultimately quite a life affirming show, and shows how I got out of the hole I was in. So it’s helpful and fun whilst acknowledging that ultimately life is a meaningless pointless waste of time. Everyone I guess, feels these things and it’s good to see someone discussing them because usually it’s kept quiet. The penis show was like that too. It helps people to realise that they are not alone in their feelings and if you can do that through humour then it is a lot more effective.

7. Towards the end of the second series of This Morning with Richard Not Judy it seemed as though some of your comedy had become almost belligerently silly. Was this an attempt to annoy someone in particular or am I just imagining it?

I don’t remember enough about it to know. We were probably irritated with the BBC and knew another series was unlikely and I remember trying to get away with stuff that we weren’t allowed to do, much of which was childish – for example during the bit where we sang about the king of the show I would try and slip in swear words in my falsetto bit – “There’s only one king. One king. Wanking” or “fah fah fah fah king Fah king Fucking” and so on. It was interesting to see how far would could push things and we’d usually do this by acting outside of the set parameters of taste. So we wouldn’t swear directly, but would use language and ideas that weren’t on the censors lists. I think this was mainly just for the fun of itself rather than to get at anyone. In hindsight I find it difficult to believe we were given these platforms to talk to the nation. The fact that TMWRNJ was live is incredible. We could have said anything we wanted. Even Fist of Fun which was not live, we had total control over what went into that. It was an amazing opportunity and I don’t think I realized that at the time. Seven years on it feels like a different person than me was involved in all that stuff, but I wish I had the opportunity to have that power again, now that I appreciate it more. I think that was what was remarkable about TMWRNJ. It was this show hidden away at the most unlikely time, doing the strangest and most subversive stuff and you had to chance across it. And none of the people who would have complained about it were on guard at that time of the day so they didn’t even notice. The religious stuff we got on that show was incredible really. And we were critical of the BBC (especially in the lottery one I guess). We just did what we wanted to do and didn’t care about the consequences. Maybe this was stupid. I remember them asking to take something out (can’t remember what it was), and saying that if we did so then it would really help get another series, but we still did it anyway. I am glad we did (even though I don’t know what it was), but I guess that attitude is the reason why we don’t have the opportunity to be on TV like that anymore.

8. Finally, what project are you currently working on? When and where can we find it?

I am doing loads of stuff. Or I am meant to be. I’ve written a sitcom for the BBC called “You Can Choose Your Friends” which will hopefully be going to pilot at least. I am writing this double act thing for Channel 4 – again just a pilot script at the moment and having difficulty applying myself, but think it might be really good. I am doing another series of my history sketch show ”That Was Then, This is Now” in September on Radio 2 and there’s another series of Banter on Radio 4 at the end of the year. I am also working on my stand up and doing a new Edinburgh show called “ménage a un” which is probably going to be themed around the idea of being alone, though in hopefully quite a positive sense. It might just end up being a load of jokes though. I only have a title and a poster at the moment. I also continue to write my blog at www.richardherring.com/warmingup and that website also has all the information about me that you could ever hope to need. Plus you can sign up for a monthly newsletter there as well.