Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP)

RHLSTP #149: Ed Byrne - Lost Leather Jacket. Rich is getting used to living in the countryside and the action movie that is attempting to get the train home. His guest has painful memories of the show he is best known for, it's Sudoku king, Ed Byrne. Richard is happy because there's lots of chances to discuss celebrity quiz shows, but luckily he's not going to dwell on his own successes or failure...

RHLSTP #148: Robert Webb - The Ideal Age To Die. Richard is still prickling with mortification after an encounter with Michael Portillo, as if turning 50 and moving house wasn't enough, but he has still found time to read his guest's fantastic new book "How Not To Grow Up", I mean "How Not To Be a Boy", Robert Webb. They chat about their mutual inability to draw 8s; and hours (and relationships) l...

RHLSTP #147: Arthur Smith - Rage and Balloon: Rich tries to find someone older than him in the audience, as he tries to squeeze some joy out of the last few hours of his forties. His guest is older and sager than he and has been doing the Edinburgh Fringe for a full decade longer, it's the self-proclaimed Mayor of Balham, Arthur Smith. They discuss smashing bottles over people's heads, worst and m...

RHLSTP #146: Limmy - Monopoly Penguin. Rich is on the cusp of a couple of massive life changes, but he won't let ageing and moving get in the way of asking comedians strange questions in an attempt to make them reveal intimate truths. Today he talks to a man with inventive ideas for revenge and murder, Limmy. They discuss being concreted into the pavement, manspreading, swearing xylophones, fake w...

RHLSTP #145: Julian Clary - Fist of Fun. Richard is still bugging last week's audience about Lego Batman - it's amazing they keep coming back. His guest is Gillian Pieface, or as she is sometimes known, Julian Clary. They chat about how the Universe lets you know it's time for a break, psychic teeth, burning pianos, perverted monks, the inability to escape innuendo, living next door to hyenas, hav...

RHLSTP #144: Katy Brand - Catering for the Dead. Richard hasn't eaten enough in a last-ditch attempt to lose weight before he turns 50, but no time for stomach rumbles because his guest is professional Margaret Thatcher impersonator and teenage evangelical Christian, Katy Brand. Questions, emergency and non-emergency are asked, like how does Brian Blessed feel about hobgoblins? Where do demons go...

RHLSTP #143: Dan Skinner - Tape in a Bag. Richard has his least successful attempt to meet his audience of all time, but no matter, he has a great guest on hand in the form of Angelos Epithemiou creator, Dan Skinner. They chat about how the character came to life, the audacious way in which he inadvertently auditioned for Shooting Stars, how he failed to get a part in Richard's sitcom, the story o...

RHEFP 2017 #4: John Robins and Ahir Shah - Suck Each Other Off A Bit. Richard reveals the hypocrisy of his parenting techniques and reminisces about the death of Lady Di. His first guest is Edinburgh Comedy Prize nominee Ahir Shah - they chat about Brexit, how looking into the sun proves your strength and wisdom and the older generations disregard for metaphorical ladders. His second guest is Edin...

RHEFP 2017 #3: Iain Stirling and Jason Manford - The Main Thing Is Ricky Gervais Didn't Win. Rich is mortified about having accidentally crashed someone else's show and is thinking of becoming someone who pays to sit in a hairdressers. But the good news is that Colin is back to remind his guests of times that things have gone wrong for them. Rich's first guest personally knows many of the people t...

RHEFP 2017 #2: James Acaster - Three Nights in Peterborough. Richard is so close to becoming the Radio Times Comedy Champion that he can almost taste it, which will just make his ultimate failure all the more painful and thus amusing, but luckily he almost shat his pants on a children's roundabout. HIs guest went one step further than that, it's the wonderful comedy genius James Acaster. They disc...

RHEFP 2017 #1: The Doug Anthony All Stars - The Boy Who Cried Batman. The King has returned and he's at the spooky New Theatre Grand Hall where the Masons get up to all sorts of mysterious time-travelling. And Richard is very excited to be welcoming comedy legends the Doug Anthony All Stars, Paul, Tim and Paul. There's lots of chat about the Edinburgh Fringe of the eighties, the point where comedy...

RHLSTP #142: Brendon Burns and Craig Quartermaine - Race Off. Richard contemplates the now trickier commute to work that he has thanks to being forced to move to the country because he is 50, before introducing veteran comedian Brendon Burns and a man with only one credit, Craig Quartermaine. It's a more contemplative RHLSTP than usual, as the two Australians discuss the racial issues that many of...

RHLSTP #141: David Baddiel -What is the Biggest Ant?. Richard is pondering what it must be like to buy a flat in BBC TV Centre, and appreciating his daughter's grasp of money. It's a reunion this week with a man he once shared a bed and a tiramisu with in a Presidential Suite, David Baddiel. They talk about double act reunions, the ethics of writing about your family secrets for comedy, the perils...

RHLSTP #140: Andrew Collins - Frog Tape. Richard is over excited to find people 2/5ths of his age in the front row and tries to forget he is on the verge of his sixth decade. He's gone against the advice of last week's podcast and had a drink, and so has his guest, it's Classic FM's Andrew Collin(g)s. It's the first time the pair have spoken in over 60 months and it would be foolish to deny that t...

RHLSTP #139: Zoe Lyons - The Camaraderie of the Jam Factory. Richard attempts to work out how a waitress in a pizza restaurant with a limited menu might be surprised by every order, before introducing former competent waitress and fudge packer, Zoe Lyons. The chat encompasses Alan Titchmarsh based humiliation, Cherie Blair, the bluntness of the Dutch, almost being the first person to die on realit...

RHLSTP #138: Adam Buxton - How Short Are You That You Can Not Reach? Richard has been gifted an almost free Twirl by the Universe. But has he been moral, immoral or amoral? To help us find out, the first ever three times returning guest on the podcast and multi-award winning podcaster, Adam Buxton. The pair discuss middle-aged confrontations and why the staff at WH Smiths in Cambridge station are...

RHLSTP #137: Jessica Knappett - Air Mattress. Richard is worried that he smells of cat wee, but he can't let that slow him down, he is chatting to the star of his as un-yet commissioned sitcom (but it will be commissioned in some universe somewhere), Jessica Knappett. Under discussion are the horrors of birth and death, the unfortunate associations that belong to the town of Bingley; what one is s...

RHLSTP #136: Joe Thomas - Pasta-based diet. Richard is excited about becoming a father for the second time, but not to witnessing the birth. His guest is, like him, a son of teachers and has a 2:1 degree in history and grew up in a town that begins with the letters Che, it's Joe Thomas. Thomas shows Herring what his life might have been if only he'd been in a hit show, whereas Herring serves as a...

RHLSTP #135: Paul Merton - Waiting For Crawford. It's back for an eleventh series - who keeps commissioning this? - and Richard's new emergency questions are coming true as he's fresh from irking a postman. His guest is someone who he used to only be able to speak to in drunken awe at early 1990s BBC Radio Light Entertainment parties, Paul Merton. They discuss their similarly comedy-nerdy teenage...

Wells Comedy Festival Extra: Bec Hill - Passing The Baton. Rich has risked the wrath of everyone in his home town of Cheddar by travelling beyond the horizon to Wells, where the crazy people dwell, and doing a special podcast for the inhabitants. But don't worry Cheddar - he mocks the Wells insane asylum dwellers and won't let them get away with being called a city. He is armed with a copy, fresh...

RHLSTP #134: Peter Serafinowicz - Brian Blessed and the Big Foot. It's the final episode of Series 10 of RHLSTP and Rich meets a bearded man who has married to find a partner (find out how he did it nerds). His guest is the laid-back and yet also intense (and rather beautiful) Peter Serafinowicz. They talk about how it's almost impossible to parody the new President of the United States, but the e...

RHLSTP #133: Lucy Porter - Altercation With A Shepherd. Richard is worried that he's been experimented on by aliens and about whether a litigious Egghead will be coming for him. His guest this week is pocket dynamo, Lucy Porter. They chat about their varying success on quiz shows, how Danny Dyer saved 2016, what it's like being married to a Queen-loving giant and what it's like performing in front...

RHLSTP #132: Simon Munnery - Don't Die. Richard quizzes his audience to find how little they have done with their lives, before introducing the comedian's comedian and avant garde comedy genius, Simon Munnery. In a frank interview Simon reveal the unwritten truth of Steve Coogan's 1992 Edinburgh Fringe hospital visit, how Mark Lamarr did the bravest thing ever witnessed on stage, how Simon met his...

RHLSTP #131: Sarah Millican - Old Man's Pants Under The Bed. Rich has just had to stand impassive in a stranger's guff for fear of looking like the one who smelt it and thus dealt it and it's been a bad day all round, but everything should be OK as it's round 5 of the verbal boxing match (that threatens to become a naked wrestling match) with Sarah Millican. They chat about Daniel Craig's bum, who...

RHLSTP #130: Jess Thom - Biscuit. Rich meets some people who have never tried sushi before introducing Tourettes Superhero (though that's a secret) Jess Thom. It's a battle to see who will say the most inappropriate thing, but for once Richard is given a run for his money as the pair discuss the facts about Tourettes, the positive effects in terms of creativity, the gatekeeper of the brain and wha...