You’re sleeping on the floor of a masonic temple between comedy shows at the 1987 Edinburgh Fringe.

The viability of your virginity is only briefly interrupted by future legendary double-act companion Stewart Lee attempting to softly masturbate you with the hand of your very-own great grandad’s ventriloquist dummy to “cheer you up”.

Herring straddles colossus-like over his post-mid life crisis

Here, the life of a seasoned cult comedian five years married with one child in the bag and another imminent would seem vanishingly far away; the world of a pepper-haired and perky 50-year old seasoned comic impossibly distant from your spelk-mattressed twenty-something idyll.

On the cusp then of yet another Fringe with a run of preview shows – and ten years on from ‘Oh Fuck I’m F40’ – Herring straddles colossus-like over his post-mid life crisis comedy domain; one turd-flecked foot ankle-deep in truculent toilet humour, one dipping its toes confidently in the waters of male existential ennui.

A bunch of brilliantly personal and self-sabotaging tales

It’s that necessity of ruthlessly embracing your inner child in the face of an ever-more bracing understanding of the enormity and apathy of a godless universe that gives the show some neat cosmic weight, wrapped around a bunch of brilliantly personal and self-sabotaging tales; after two years away Herring’s return to the Fringe sees him 50 years beyond his birth, 30 away from unsolicited wood-handed wanks and as bracing as ever.

Leigh Venus at Live Theatre, 30th July 2017

Originally published at Narc Magazine Online

Photos: Unknown, please contact Leigh if you are the copyright holder.