Press

Times review of podcast

Podcast of the week: Collings and Herrin
Our correspondent lets a little Collings and Herrin into his life
Chris Campling

The remarkable thing about the Collings and Herrin podcast is that not only can the music journalist and broadcaster Andrew Collins and the stand-up Richard Herring (the floating "g" is a joke) find enough to talk about every Friday, but that they can keep it up for an hour or more. So tune in quickly, because sooner or later they are going to realise that, despite being paid entertainers, they aren't actually being paid for this random jollity.

Their conversational canvas is wide - everything that's been in the news that week, and everything else that occurs to them along the way (such as a competition to see who has eaten a piece of chicken the longest past its sell-by date). And they don't hesitate or repeat themselves, although there's a lot of deviation, chiefly but not exclusively into the realms of swearing.

I came to it only recently, and was instantly captivated by such snippets as Herring running the bulls at Pamplona to protest against animal cruelty, while suffering from dysentery and wearing women's underwear, as well as the notion that John Lennon is in Hell because of the line: "Imagine there's no Heaven".

The highlights of the most recent pod included fine musings on what might have happened if the ME in Quincy ME had been a reference to his suffering from yuppie flu: "Come on, Quincy, time to investigate," one mused. "Ah no, I'm too tired." This, however, led to slightly dodgy thoughts on whether necrophilia was allowable if you really loved the corpse and warmed her up first.

Then there was the question Herring wished that he had asked Al Pacino at a press conference: "Which of the characters you have played do you think would win in a fight, Othello or Scarface?" And some rather more serious contemplation of whether the penis that a minor TV actor attempted to saw off in prison where he is being held pending trial for double murder should be called, by The Sun, "a willy". It's childish, apparently.

And when these two call something childish you have to accept their word. It may not be suitable for sensitive souls, but this is easily the quickest-passing hour in podcast land.

www.comedy.org.uk/podcasts/collingsherrin