Ten years ago, Richard Herring was resisting adulthood and fighting his way through a mid-life crisis. Now, as a husband and father, he's taking stock of his adult life with his new show, Oh Frig! I'm 50.
Ten years ago, Richard created, Oh F*ck, I'm 40!, a show that described his midlife crisis and resistance to adulthood. A decade on, what can audiences expect from Oh Frig! I'm 50?
"Before I met my wife, the show was about how much of a mess I was and how badly I was behaving, and then I met my wife and everything sort of turned around and changed - and now I've got two kids and I'm 50, so things are different."
He continued: "I think it's about understanding your place in the universe. As a white man, you kind of live this charmed life, really, and then you start to get a bit older and people aren't that bothered about you anymore. I say in the show that you start to realise what it's like to be anyone else on the planet, because people aren't trying to impress you anymore as you get older.
"You have to learn to cope with that, but I think that's part of maturity and sort of understanding that you're not the most important person on the planet. Becoming a dad obviously means your life revolves around other people rather than around yourself."
Once part of comedy double act Lee and Herring, Richard has found a successful career with a finger in every pie. As a stand-up comedian, blogger, podcaster and star of Radio 4’s Relativity, he appears to be a content creating machine.
"I just really like comedy and I really like working, and I think I just sort of realised that about fifteen years ago, when I started doing the blog, I thought, 'You just have to get on with it and do it yourself'. You can wait for TV and radio to commission things, and obviously I've done that in my time but really, if you just get on with it, you can create stuff."
He added: "If you're writing a blog everyday, then one in ten of them is going to have something in it, you're generating a lot of material. I like to be busy and I find that's the best way to be creative, for me."
When it comes to "creating stuff", there's no better man. As mentioned, not only does Richard write his own long-running blog, but he creates enough stand-up material for a new tour every year and hosts the popular Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, where he interviews some of the biggest names in comedy, including Stephen Fry, Russell Brand and Sarah Millican.
"I enjoy doing the Podcast so much, and they're comparatively quite easy to do. They're stressful and tiring, but you're having a fun chat with someone who is funny and usually that's quite a nice way to spend a Monday evening.
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"I think I'm accidentally quite good at them, because I know what not to ask as I get interviewed myself. I get asked things all the time, and I know the pitfalls of what makes a good question and how to spin off and get someone to share a story they haven't told before, which I think is the almost accidental trick of the questions in my podcast.
"I ask about things that I don't know if they've got a story about, and they probably don't have a story about, but they will try and find a story about it to be polite. If you keep the question vague enough, there's lots of ways to go with it."
What's most interesting about Richard's career is that he started his blog and podcast long before they became buzzwords. How did the comedian find himself so ahead of the curve?
"When the podcast started, a lot of comics said, 'Why are you doing that if you're not getting paid?' and I was saying, 'I just think it's good to get stuff out there, and I'd rather be doing stuff than not doing stuff'. It's better than sitting at home and it's a way of getting your stuff out to an audience - and that is as important as anything."
"I'm not a businessman, but it was accidentally a very good business decision because obviously, if you're putting a podcast out every week and you're putting a blog out every day then people are coming back to your website and if you've got gigs or if you've got a book out then those people are seeing it."
Oh Frig! I'm 50 is coming to The Sugar Club in Dublin on April 4th and 5th - tickets priced €22 are on sale now through www.ticketmaster.ie & usual outlets nationwide.
