Warming Up

The relentless nature of parenting means that even after getting in at midnight after a gig and taking another hour or so to be calmed down enough to sleep, you’re still up at 6.30am with the kids. Luckily I am 55 so was pretty much awake already. A full on tour might be too much for me. Or if I can stay away from home enough nights might be the making of me!

I was recording two book club interviews today, one after the other and still hadn’t quite finished one of the books. But I managed to get the last hour of the book into the 40 minutes I had left by listening at double speed. 

I then had an interesting chat about religion with David Baddiel and emotions with Dr Dean Burnett. Somehow I more or less kept things together and was sharp enough to ask some questions and give some opinions. Even more luckily both guests were more than capable of talking. I think you’ll enjoy these ones, though they won’t be out for two or three weeks, as there’s another ball podcast this week.

I have a google search on my own name which emails me all the mentions of “Richard Herring” from the day, because that’s just who I am (in both senses) and it was a bad day for the world’s Richard Herrings today. One Richard Herring has been critically injured in a shooting in (where else?) America 

And another American Richard Herring has died at the age of 72 

There was no news in today’s email about me. Just the dead Richard Herring and the paralysed one. And that’s why you don’t do a google search on yourself. Because it’s not enjoyable to read about someone with your name getting shot or dying. There can’t be that many Richard Herrings out there (we’re no Dave Gormans), but bad things seem to happen to us a lot. Another of us, Richard D Herring, passed away a couple of years ago (leading to you kindly raising money for his gofundme campaign the night before this Richard Herring went in to have his ball cut off). It’s not looking good for Richard Herrings at all is it? If we don’t die we are injured or semi-castrated. It’s bleak. The kind of bleakness that can’t be turned into a best-selling book and TV show. But maybe some kind of Final Destination movie. Or is a Terminator just working his way through us until he gets the right one.

I wouldn’t like to be American economist Richard J Herring right now. Or Richard K Herring.

All I know about Richard Herrings is that they all love using their middle initial - look at this guy.

And none of us have the same middle initial.

Are there really only 26 of us out there and only one can survive?

Another thrilling frame of snooker tonight - the level of play has gone up a gear and I don’t think anyone could deny that this is a thrilling sporting event that will surely soon be on terrestrial television (again - it’s been on once). Watch it here.

Or listen here.