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Richard Herring and Stewart Lee

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Udderbelly, Edinburgh Fringe

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Like a fine wine, Herring improves with age

By Bruce Dessau, Evening Standard  15.08.07
 
Richard Herring has been coming to Edinburgh for 20 years, but this is his best show yet

Richard Herring has been coming to Edinburgh for 20 years, but this is his best show yet

Stewart Lee never fails to be interesting

Stewart Lee never fails to be interesting

Richard Herring
****
Stewart Lee
****

Richard Herring has been coming to Edinburgh for two decades, doing sketches, plays and cod-lectures, but his latest stand-up show, Oh F*ck, I'm 40, is his most successful yet.

It's not remotely cerebral, just a heartfelt assessment of what it is like to have a middle-aged body and puerile mind.

The scruffy commitment-phobe crams his set with a dense mix of pungent one-liners and extended examples of his kidult antics. He still feels 20 - "except when I'm walking upstairs" - but knows that time's winged chariot is about to mow him down.

So who can blame him for wanting to cling on by taking up skateboarding and wearing paunch-revealing T-shirts?

There is room for a seize-the-day moral, too. Though not before our hero has confessed to brawling badly in a Liverpool street with an academic, had an exquisitely sarcastic dig at Ricky Gervais and slotted in a topical stab at Chris Langham, which prompted gasps but mostly guffaws. Herring may be past it as a man, but as a comedian he is at his peak.

Herring's erstwhile partner Stewart Lee never fails to be interesting. His latest show, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, is not quite his finest hour, but it is still a dazzling monologue skewering television, celebrity culture and Tom O'Connor.

Lee is at the Soho Theatre from 13 November, so expect further deconstruction of stand-up's finest deconstructor then.

Until 27 August (www.edfringe.com).

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