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I would like to think that I am the cleverest person in the Herring family, though my inability to do my daughter's homework suggests that might not be the case. Also my wife is very smart, though she's only a Herring through marriage so I am not counting her.
My brother is undeniably cleverer than me too and can speak several languages and decided to deliberately fail any papers on his degree that he couldn't get a first on. It meant I got a better degree than him (even though I attempted papers I knew I'd get a third on), but he got distinctions on all the papers he deigned to do.
I feel this was a supercool way to behave, but also insane. I tried my hardest on everything (admittedly after having done no work at all until the final term, so sort of the photographic negative of his approach) and came out with an average degree right on the borderline of 2.1 and 2.2, but somehow sneaking into the former category.
You can be so clever that you are stupid and maybe the story of me and my brother shows that twice over in different ways.
But my brother's daughter, Emily, has proven to be smarter than us all, aced her exams without walking out of any of them (as far as I know) and made a career as an academic and also, somehow, is a balanced, sociable and cool person. I am not saying that it unusual for academics, but a few of them are certainly a little strange and live in towers made out of ivory, even though that is devastating to the elephant population and unnecessary when there are more practical building supplies reading available.
Anyway, Emily has written a brilliant book about Henri Bergson, a philosopher who I am only aware of because his name appears in a Monty Python sketch (and pretty much everything I know about philosophy comes from their sketches - it's how I know that Proust in his first book, wrote about, wrote about... he wrote about the..." then the buzzer goes off.
I now know a lot more about Bergson thanks to having Emily
on this week's RHLSTP Book Club. I am not sure which way the nepotism is working there. Would I get an author of this intelligence and capability if I wasn't related to her? I think that makes me a nepo uncle. I can say with 100% certainty that my mild success in comedy has had no influence on my niece getting to write a book about a philosopher. Not only because that would be insane, but I also met her publisher who had no idea who I was.
If you listen to the podcast you will see that even though I am suspicious of philosophers and their total failure to find the meaning of life. Bergson's work has made me think about life. Which I suppose makes me a philosopher too. One as good or better than Bergson? Not for me to say.
His life is incredible too though - a little over 100 years ago this guy was world famous and treated like a pop star before there were any pop stars, even though he was an odd looking fella in a bowler hat. But almost as quickly as he wowed the world he was practically forgotten, or at least fell out of fashion. Emily, a huge fan of the man, hopes to change that.
Tonight we drove to North London to go to her book launch, which was a fun affair and I was no longer a hard hitting interviewer, but a proud uncle. There aren't many people on RHLSTP that I can claim to have once changed their nappies. And Emily is no exception, as I never changed hers. But I have known her since she was a baby and if you'd told me then that she'd write a book about Henri Bergson, I would have said, "What the bloke from the Monty Python sketch? Wow, cool. And yes I fully understand that babies turn into adults who might be capable of all sorts of things, so that's no real surprise to me. But how do you know? And what does that say about the nature of time? Wait, are you a time travelling Henri Bergson?...."
It is quite remarkable how many books have been written by my family, with none of us having any outside assistance or family connection that got us through the door: Catie and I have written around about 20 published books between us (even if I've self-published four of mine) and Catie's brother's partner is an award winning novelist (whose family coincidentally hail from Middlesbrough - his aunties were at the primary school where my grandad was the headmaster). Look my books are mainly about genitals and stupid questions, but at least Emily's is about something important and has some answers (even if some of them are stupid or wrong).
We've done OK given how many of our stories started in Middlesbrough (only Catie has no connection with the place, making her achievement a little less impressive).
Anyway, if you want to read something by a clever Herring, rather than a stupid one (or one who has pretended to be stupid for so long that he has actually become stupid)
then buy Emily's book here. But only if you've bought all of mine.
