Great chat!
My love for podcast’s came suddenly. One day I had never really thought about them, the next day I was up to my neck in Adam Buxton, Serial and Quickly Kevin. Actually though, I had unknowingly experienced another podcast before all of the above filled my life like beautiful bird song…
Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast, or RHLSTP to the cool kids, see’s legendary comedian Richard Herring hosting various, sometimes high profile, always interesting, guests at the Leicester Square Theatre to a paying audience. He then makes the resulting recordings available for free both on YouTube and as a podcast. It was the by the former method that I first experienced RHLSTP a couple of years ago without even knowing what a podcast was.
The reasons that RHLSTP remains so popular and so acclaimed are two fold. Firstly, the quality of the guests. Stewart Lee, Adam Buxton, Stephen Fry, Charlie Brooker, Jon Ronson, Steve Coogan, Louis Theroux etc etc, the list is endless. Well, not endless, there have been 182 episodes so it ends after 182 but it is an impressive list nevertheless. Confirmed for the upcoming series are Greg Davies, Michael Sheen and Ross Noble among others. A magnificent haul.
The second reason that RHLSTP has built up such a loyal fan base is Herring’s unique interviewing style. Veering wildly between the ridiculous and the sublime, Herring is disarming and likeable and this has wrought poignant and salient confessions from various guests (the Stephen Fry episode is particularly emotive). Almost just as entertaining though is when Herring gets it wrong (I won’t spoil anything here but the Stephen Merchant episode is the perfect example of this).
When things become too uncomfortable, Herring always has his emergency questions to fall back on. Examples being ‘Would you rather have pubic hair made of unremovable barbed wire or to be attacked by a rabid badger in your sleep once a week?’ or ‘If you had to wear somebody’s guts for garters – if you had to – who would you disembowel in order to facilitate your socks staying up?’. These bizarre brain teasers have now been turned into a book which you can buy here.
Along with aforementioned beautiful man Adam Buxton, Richard Herring was something of a pioneer in terms of British podcasts. If you have never felt the warm embrace of RHLSTP, now is the perfect time to get involved.