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Pre 1985 - 1990
Pre 1985
I have always been a big fan of comedy. I grew up in Cheddar in Somerset, where there was little to do and spent much of my teenage years, watching comedy on TV and listening to comedy LPs and tapes. Monty Python was an early favourite (though I only knew it from the records initially, which obviously, being a comedy nerd, I knew off by heart) I also enjoyed Not The Nine O Clock News and the Goodies. Later I would become obsessed with Rik Mayall I loved his character Kevin Turvey and used to watch A Kick Up the Eighties and tape only his bits. The Young Ones was clearly a big thing for me.
I had always loved creative writing at school, but when I got to about 14, me and my friends started writing sketches for school assemblies and also wrote a subversive school magazine called Inkings (our school being the Kings of Wessex, so you see we were in Kings. Very clever!)
In the sixth form we started putting on revue shows, which usually caused offence to someone or other. Some of these were driven "underground" (or rather we had to do them in the sixth form common room, after school) and at one of these I premiered my song "My Penis Can Sing!" My friends from school are much amused by the fact that in my thirties I am still doing shows about cocks (although for my parents it goes further back, because as a young child I would constantly shout "Poo poo, wee wee, bottom!" I have not progressed very far)
1986
I went up to Oxford University, and was very keen to get involved in comedy. In the first term at an audition for the Oxford Revue (where I perhaps foolishly sang "My Penis Can Sing") I met Stewart Lee in a corridor.
I was asked to sing my penis song at the fortnightly Oxford Revue Workshop the next Sunday. On the way to the gig I saw Stewart sitting in the Kentucky Fried Chicken shop, eating chicken. He was on the way to a Suzanne Vega gig. But he didn't see me. Watching.
The audience at that gig were somewhat bemused by my song, though some of them liked it. It was the only ORW I could attend that term, as I had exams. However, I also heard people talking about the weird sketches about fruit that Stewart Lee was doing.
I met him again at the ORW Christmas party, in a cricket pavilion. He saw me dancing on my own to the Sex Pistols (I mean no-one else was dancing at all) and thought I might be OK. He'd heard about the Penis song. He thought it sounded good. We were both keen to do something different. We decided to do some sketches together at the next ORW. If I had known what this would lead to, I might have stopped in my tracks. No, not really. It's been great!
1987
We teamed up with some friends of ours, Rich Canning (who is now a respected academic), Mike Cosgrave (a renowned metallurgist as well as a folk-jazz musician in the band Sine, Emma Williams (now Emma Kennedy the TV presenter, comic and the woman behind the beard of Nostradamus) and Jo Renshaw. We called ourselves "The Seven Raymonds" (there were six of us and as you'll have noticed none of us were called Raymond)
After a couple of terms of performing together we were given a slot at the Edinburgh Fringe by the Oxford Theatre Group. We performed a show called "KMNO4- the Potassium Permanganate Extravaganza at St Mary's Hall (now sadly an office block) to about 4 people a day. I also appeared in a children's show called "Old King Cole" at Abbey Laird Hall (which is also no longer a venue). Although no-one came and no-one reviewed us, we were able to return to Oxford and do the show again with the words "Direct from the Edinburgh Fringe" on the poster. It was a massive sell-out! By now Richard and Jo had left the troupe and we were joined by Tim Richardson (who is now a journalist who has just published an excellent book about the history of sweets!)
1988
Stewart and me wrote the Oxford Revue "Waving at the Pigeons", which I also performed in. Also performing were Ben Moor (who is an actor and writer of great skill. Check out http://www.spesh.com/ben/) Emma "Kennedy" Williams, Ben Pope (whose brother Phil was in Radioactive) and Catherine Hood (now a doctor specialising in sexually transmitted diseases!) We did a short tour before our Edinburgh run. In Edinburgh the show got poor reviews and was sabotaged on the first weekend by Keith Allen who moved crash mats on the stage and tried to fight the company manager. I appeared on TV the next week to rebuke his statement that we were public school tossers (only Pope had actually been to public school) , but didn't really help things. At the time stand-up was in the ascendancy and student comedy (especially Oxbridge stuff) was being derided as old school and privileged. In fact we were sleeping on the floor of a Masonic temple with 50 other students and no bathroom and we were skint. We also performed at Late and Live (because they were going to give us £10 each) and were viciously heckled by an audience full of all the London stand-ups. Looking back I can see the humour of the situation, but all the bad press and aggressive attitude to us meant I was not keen to go back to Edinburgh or do comedy anymore.
Despite this horrible experience we did fulfil a second booking at the club the following week (because we needed the money) and put together a different set. Rather angrily I wrote a double act with Ben Moor called "Herring and Spaz" in which Ben was essentially my mentally handicapped younger brother, who I made dance for a Twix, which I then stamped on. I remember one of the Doug Anthony Allstars correctly berating me afterwards, as did another woman whose mentally handicapped sister had recently died.
I had had a pretty miserable year and I guess I had let it get to me. But to be honest, it was quite a funny act!
1989
Stew and me came to London to try our hand at writing and doing the circuit. Stew was a lot more prepared for this as he'd been working up an act at University and at Edinburgh that year. I was still really writing sketches and character stuff. His solo career took off very quickly, whilst I experimented with different personas and material. I wasn't very good. About one in three of the gigs I did would go well, but one in three would go disastrously badly. Whenever anyone important came they seemed to see a bad one. I wasn't at all comfortable performing alone and I think my experience at Edinburgh had made me overly paranoid about the stand up circuit.
I did a variety of temp jobs including writing the phone directory for BT and finding lost invoices for a company that manufactured parts for lighthouses!
1990
I continued floundering with my stand-up whilst Stewart won the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year and was offered representation by fledgling management company Avalon. A year later they offered to represent me.
On the first day back at work (advertising sales) this decade I was called into the manager's office and sacked. This wasn't really a tragedy, but it was the last real job I ever had. Having been sacked I was eligible for the dole and after 8 weeks enrolled on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. I was a full time (and very poor) writer/comedian.
We began writing for Radio 4 topical satire show, "Weekending". It wasn't a show or a style of comedy that we personally liked (very early on we had agreed to try and avoid doing comedy about TV shows, personalities or clanking topical satire - which is pretty much what Weekending was about. Interestingly many of our most popular skits have broken those rules at least partly). We wrote for this show for a year and I found it so stressful that I once hid in a box in the writer's room. One producer used 20 seconds of our stuff in 8 weeks, which was quite disappointing when this was my main source of income! However we also got to work with and meet Sarah Smith, Harry Thompson and Armando Iannucci (who we knew a bit already), who would all be instrumental in getting us more challenging and enjoyable work.
On going back over all this I realise how miserable I was at the time.
We were lucky enough to be given a radio light entertainment grant for a year, where we were paid a small amount of money and became effectively staff writers. Don't think they do it any more.
GO TO 1991 - 1996
GO TO 1997 - 2002
GO TO 2002 - 2005
GO TO 2006 - 2007
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| FORTHCOMING EVENTS
NEW DOWNLOADS/PRESS:
03 12 08 DOWNLOADS Pdfs of programmes for TMWRNJ tour and the Headmaster's son
02 12 08 PRESS Review in Oxford Daily Information
28 11 08 PRESS Review in Gravesend News Shopper
18 11 08 PRESS 4 star Guardian review of Lyric gig
17 11 08 PRESS Times review of Lyric gig
13 11 08 DOWNLOADS Cover of forthcoming GFS release Warming Up Vol I, Bye Bye Balham
GIGS:
These are my upcoming gigs.
Click GIGS above for more details or you could have a look on Chortle
Dec
5th Bush Hall
6th Chapel, Islington
8th Hammersmith
9th Islington
11th Brigthon
14th Laughter in Odd Places
15th Tattershall -Embankment
Porthole Kilburn
18th Bloomsbury Theatre
WHAT THE DICKINGS:
The episode of What the Dickens that I appear in will be airing on Sky Arts 1 and Sky HD on the 24th December at 7.30pm. The perfect Christmas celebration.
LEE AND HERRING DOWNLOADS:
There's loads of great Lee and Herring related downloads, including an audio of the recent Lyric gig, at the rather excellent fistoffun.net
PODCAST:
Collings and Herring PODCAST number 40 is up at the usual website or you can subscribe through iTunes.
HEADMASTER'S SON TOUR 2009:
These are the dates and box office numbers for my Spring 2009 tour. Please book now to avoid disappointment.
JAN
27 CANTERBURY 01227 812851 (ask for Andy) or email Richard@comedyinc.co.uk
30 WHITSTABLE - 01227 281174
31 TEWKESBURY Roses Theatre- 01684 295074
FEB
17- 21st and 24th-28th LONDON, Leicester Square Theatre - 0844 847 2475 or visit website
MARCH
01 WINCHESTER, Theatre Royal 01962 840440
05 BATH, Komedia 0845 293 8480
06 COVENTRY, Warwick Arts Centre 024 7652 4524
07 NEW MILTON, Forest Arts Centre 01425 612393
08 BRISTOL, The Tobacco Factory -0117 902 0344
09 TAUNTON, The Brewhouse Theatre - 01823 283244
11 KINGSTON 07973 783339
12 CAMBRIDGE, The Junction - 01223 511 511
13 UPPINGHAM, Uppingham Theatre 01572 820820
15 YORK, Hyena Lounge 0871 7042054
16 HARROGATE, Harrogate Theatre - 01423 502 116
18 LEAMINGTON SPA, Royal Spa Centre 01926 334418
19 LIVERPOOL, Unity Theatre 0151 709 4988
20 WOLVERHAMPTON, Little Civic Theatre - 0870 320 7000
21 GLASGOW, Oran Mor - 0870 013 5464
22 MANCHESTER, Frog and Bucket 0161 236 9805
23 SHEFFIELD, Memorial Hall 0114 2 789 789
24 LEEDS, The Library 0113 2440794
25 CARDIFF, St David's Hall 029 2087 8444
26 OXFORD, OFS Studio 01865 297 170
28 NORFOLK, Kings Lynn Arts Centre 01553 764864
APRIL
01 CHELTENHAM, Town Hall 0844 576 2210
02 SUTTON COLDFIELD Station Pub WEBSITE
03 DERBY, Assembly Rooms 01332 255800
05 NOTTINGHAM Just the Tonic 0115 912 9000
17 STAFFORD, The Gatehouse - 01785 254 653
18 WARRINGTON, Pyramid Arts Centre 01925 442 345
20 JERSEY, Arts Centre 01534 700444
22 NORWICH, Arts Centre 01603 660352
23 BRIGHTON, Komedia 0845 293 8480
24 ALDERSHOT, West End Centre 01252 330040
25 CLACTON ON SEA, Princes Theatre 01255 686633
ON THE HOUR:
Classic Radio 4 series "On The Hour" which I wrote for is to be released IN FULL on CD on the 24th November by Warp Records. Click here for information on how to order
POSTERS:
You can now buy a copy of the poster of "The Headmaster's Son" from the good folks at gofasterstripe.com. Along with many of my recent Edinburgh show posters. Only five pounds each, or buy three for ten pounds!
YOUTUBE:
See a bit of my drunken gig from the Frog and Bucket on July 2nd here and watch as I effortlessly appropriate material from both TMWRNJ and Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World!
NEW STATESMAN:
I write a fortnightly blog for The New Statesman website, which occasionally has stuff that hasn't appeared in Warming Up in it.
LEE AND HERRING VIDEO:
Why buy the audio version of the slightly disappointing Lee and Herring video, when you can hear AND see it here for FREE.
TMWRNJ:
The first episode of TMWRNJ has been posted on google video. I suspect more might follow - Click here to see it
Or you can access loads of episodes on the website of Stewart Lee.
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