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I was very sad to see that the Queen might have to move out of Buckingham Palace. Where will she go? What will become of her? Who will take her in? Are we really going to let this old lady wander the streets with nowhere to lay down her head or store her collection of crowns, paintings and jewels. It’s going to cost £150 million pounds to repair her house, which puts my own recent renovations into some kind of context - I only spent about half that amount. If anyone has a sofa or a caravanette that she can use in the meantime do write in to The Queen, Buckingham Palace, London. Hopefully she’ll have set up some kind of forwarding service for her mail if the move is imminent.
I reckon we should all chip in and help her pay for the repairs. It’s only about £3 each. The price of a cup of coffee at a service station. Let’s help save the poor queen. Surely we could come up with some kind of system where they just take that money out of our pay packets. We’d never miss it. And maybe they could close a few hospitals to make up the shortfall. This is an old lady we’re talking about. She could be your gran. Think of it like that.
And I am not just saying this because I am hoping to be invited to another slap up meal at the Palace. I really think it.
Also the Houses of Parliament need a few billion pounds worth for renovation. But if we all just worked one extra day this year and gave all our wages to David Cameron that would probably pay for it. We need our parliament in a crumbling old building which doesn’t even have enough seats for all the MPs (luckily they rarely all bother going into work at the same time). Idiots might say that it’s foolish having the parliament meet in an ancient building right in the heart of the capital when you could just open it up as a tourist attraction and hotel for super-rich Americans and use the money to build a modern parliament building in the centre of the country, which all the MPs can more easily access and the land prices would be considerably cheaper. But those people are idiots, like I said at the start of the sentence, so why are we giving them the time of day. History is important and must be paid for by the general populace because of its importance. The queens and prime ministers have given enough by actually becoming historical figures, so why should they pay?
I did some work on the Happy Now programme today and then last thing at night wrote some copy for the leaflet. Which currently constitutes about 50% of the material I have for the actual show. But I think in doing this I might have found my way in to the show. I am still feeling a bit sick about the task that is in front of me with these 12 shows (never mind the other work I have to do) and I am hoping that I can get an audience. But maybe the personal journey of reliving all this stuff is the most important thing.
Here’s where things look to be heading:
They told me the birth of my first baby would be the happiest day of my life, but it was full of unspeakable terror, seeing my wife in agony. And after all that I was presented with a bloody, battered, screaming troll, inconsolable after being ripped from her universe into ours. And I was responsible for keeping this fragile, furious alien creature alive. I’ve had happier days. Like that time I had a biopsy on my penis.
After years of floundering around trying to find happiness in casual sex, drinking to excess and unsuccessfully chasing celebrity, Richard Herring is finally married and a father. But is he happy now? Or was the boozing, cruising and schmoozing actually the key to contentment. He seems to remember it made him miserable, but looking back at it now he can’t quite work out why.
In truth he is bamboozled by an unfamiliar feeling of contentment. But he can’t enjoy it anyway as he’s full of fear of all the things that could destroy it.
Can he still be funny if he’s no longer screwed up? Do we need our clowns to be sad and our comedy tinged with tragedy?
Is work even important now he has a family? And has it really taken him 48 years old to learn what Jim Carey realises in 90 minutes in every single one of his films?
Herring examines the things that have made him happy and the things that haven’t and tries to work out if it is possible or even desirable to be really happy, asking:
Is the pram in the hallway the enemy of creativity? And if so, can you get around that by keeping the pram in the lounge?
Was Happy the dwarf always happy or when he was alone in the empty night did he cry silent tears, wishing he could show the real him, but worried that he’d have to change his name?
Is the best way to get one over on our more successful friends to be genuinely happy for them? Imagine, they’ve put in all that work and you’re not even a little bit jealous. How devastating would that be for them?
Which of us is happy in the world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied? William Thackeray
Richard Herring is an award winning podcaster, (Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast) and appears regularly on TV and radio in shows including Fist of Fun, Have I Got News For You and Just A Minute. He writes a weekly column for the Metro newspaper and is the world’s only semi-professional self-playing snookerist.
“Superb†Time Out
“A very funny and very intelligent show†Bruce Dessau, Beyond the Joke.
This week’s Metro column was about my near-death apricot experience.
Immediately it was picked up with tongue (and fruit stones) firmly in cheeks by the Western Daily Press. Though they might just have been impressed that someone from the West Country had actually encountered the fabled apricot.
RHLSTP with TV’s Emma Kennedy is now up in the usual places. On video here
itunes
And on audio on iTunes and the British Comedy Guide.
You can catch me doing an hour of best-of material at the Udderbelly on the South Bank on Thursday evening (and then a completely different hour of routines next week)
