Dear Lee
& Herring fan,
As you
may know we like to reply to all our fan mail and e-mails personally.
We think this is important if you've taken the time to write to us and
because at the end of the day you pay our wages.
Also you as a body are the only people we can really trust to let us
know how we are doing, whether we've sold out, if we're doing OK, etc.
Unfortunately these days, we are getting upwards of 50 letters a day
and 20 or so e-mails, and to reply to everyone in the depth they write
to us, as well as writing new comedy ideas, would be impossible. So
we hope you don't mind that along with a short and specific personal
reply we have also enclosed this factsheet which answers some of the
more often asked questions, giving us time to deal with other enquiries
in more depth.
It is unproductive for us to reply for example to criticisms that you've
heard TV material on the radio 15 times a day, because there are several
reasons why we have done this (see below). Apologies if you receive
more than one copy of this. If you've written more than once we might
reply to your letters individually. With so many of you sometimes it's
hard to keep track of who you've already replied to. Pass any spare
copies on to a friend.
Anyway, enough of our yakkin'. Sit back, relax and enjoy the first Lee
& Herring Factsheet 1 (There probably won't be more than one, but just
in case).
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STEWART
GRAHAM LEE
Birthday - 5th April 1968
Hometown - Solihull in the West Midlands
Educated - Solihull School, St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Collects - Passport Photos, Unusual objects, Records, Crucifixes
from around the world
Awards - Hackney Empire New Act of the Year 1990
Previous Jobs - Paper Boy (got sacked for being too old at 15),
Doctors' receptionist, Quality Control in an Orange Juice Factory,
Data Input, Researcher into the history of Gardening stuff I've
done without Rich - Stand-up. My first love.
I still do loads of gigs and have done new hours in Edinburgh
the last two years, although its harder to keep everything going
now. I did three gigs with a band once but I gave it up to concentrate
on all this stuff. I'd like to make a Country and Western album
in Spain under a false name.
I'm doing lots of bits of journalisty stuff these days too - Guardian,
National student Extra, Vox, Blah Blah Blah, Sunday Times, Observer
- and hope to be a writer when I grow up. I'm working on a pilot
of a show called Cluub Zarathustra with some other people for
Channel 4. |
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| RICHARD
KEITH HERRING
Birthday 12th July 1967
Hometown - Cheddar in Somerset
Educated - The Kings of Wessex Upper School, Cheddar and St Catherine's
College Oxford
Collects - Kinder Egg Toys, Videos
Awards - The Kings of Wessex Ex Pupil of the Year Award 1995 and
Gamesmaster Golden Joystick.
Previous Jobs - Picking mushrooms at Axbridge Mushroom Far (since
closed down) in 1985 for 3 weeks... Cave Guide at Cheddar Caves
1986 and 1987...Barman in the Prince of Wales pub in Oxford 1989...
Office work at Pharos Marine in Brentford - (they made parts for
lighthouses and that is true) five weeks in 1989... Compiling
the phone book for West London in Ealing (I changed Stewart Lee's
name to Stewart Wee -true) four weeks 1989... Advertising Sales
for Caversham Press, selling advertising space in a brochure aimed
at British companies looking to invest in the Russian market.
No sales. Sacked Christmas Eve 1989...
Since then I've been working as a comedian, although I did write
for Macmillan's Encyclopedia of the Royal Family. I was uncredited
for my work.
stuff I've done without Stewart- I did stand up for about three
years 1989-92, and did OK. I played most of the big clubs and
did some good gigs and some very bad ones. I never really got
established and eventually gave up doing clubs in favour of radio
work and hour long Edinburgh shows. These have been 1993 - "Ra-Ra-Rasputin"
a musical combining Russian history with the Boney M back catalogue.
Sally Phillips (FOF spam girl) , Andrew Mackay (FOF pie man),
Ben Moor (FOF fishmonger) and Clare DeVries were in this one.
1994 "Richard Herring is Fat" - an expose on how I'd put on two
stone since the last Edinburgh.
Sally Phillips and Kevin Eldon (FOF the talented one) were in
this one "This Morning with Richard Not Judy" -a morning chat
show, where tickets were auctioned, money and a car was given
away and the Fringe's top names came in to chat about the news.
Stew and Peter were in this almost every day and due to there
being no advertising this is the only show we've ever done in
Edinburgh that actually made money. 1995 "Richard Herring Is All
Man" - a bleak look at my troubled life as a man, including the
village of the married sketch and a nightmare vision of the ghost
of the beard I never had. Sally Phillips and Tom Binns ( He's
been in Fist of Fun but usually gets cut out. He's the one whose
penis is visible in York City are Magic) were in this one.
Over the course of Edinburghs I have lost several thousands of
pounds, but hey I've made some good friends! I'm currently working
on a sit-com called "Sex Amongst the Stalagmites" (provisionally)
which is about Cheddar caves and sex. I was meant to have finished
this last year, but didn't get time. I also provided the voice
of a spider for Channel 4's Schools TV in 1993, but the tape "went
wrong" and I was not asked to come in and do it again, someone
else did. I appeared in show 4 of the terrible BBC2 topical comedy
show "Loose Talk" in 1994. I do not believe that there is another
series of "Loose Talk" in the pipeline. I occasionally write for
newspapers etc, but not very often as I do not want to end up
like a vain and self obsessed journalist like Tony Parsons or
Stewart Lee. (Only joking Stew) |
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LEE
AND HERRING - TOGETHER
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Rich
and Stew met properly for the first time at a Christmas party
at Oxford University in December 1986 (although they had met
briefly in a corridor and Rich had seen Stew through the window
of a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop, but Stew did not see him watching)
The party was held by the Oxford Comedy Cellar which put on
a show every fortnight in a cellar.
They had both performed during the term, but never in the same
show. Stewart had done some stuff about fruit being used in
an unusual way.
Rich had done a ventriloquist song called "My penis can sing".
At the party Rich was dancing to the Sex Pistols on his own
and Stew thought he'd probably be OK and liked the sound of
the singing penis (the twat) and suggested working together
on some stuff. The next term they began performing sketches
with some other people in a team called hilariously"The Seven
Raymonds" even though there were only six of them and none of
them were called Raymond!!!!
This team took a show to Edinburgh in 1987 called hilariously
"The Potassium Permanganate Extravaganza" and performed in Oxford
for the next two to three years. It was during this time that
the original "Jesus Behind You" Sketch was first performed.
So if you want to complain about us doing old stuff, how's about
that? Rich and Stew wrote (and Rich was in) the 1988 Oxford
Revue "Waving at the Pigeons" which toured the country to mixed
reviews and was sabotaged in Edinburgh by mad actor Keith Allen
who had a fight with the theatre manager who is now a teacher
and tried to kill Ben Moor.
Allen also slagged it off on telly and Rich appeared on Edinburgh
nights and was harangued for being a posh public school twat
(only the twat part was correct).
But he was good in Martin Chuzzlewhit. The Revue was also asked
to perform at the Gilded Balloon Club, but this was a set up
and all the circuit comedians turned up to heckle the rich public
school twats. Ironically we were still happy to do it as we
got paid £10 each and came back the next week too.
Stew wrote and directed the 1989 Oxford Revue which got even
worse reviews but wasn't any worse in actuality. In 1989 we
came to London to see if we could cut it professionally. We
both tried to do stand up. Stew was very successful, getting
booked almost everywhere and quite quickly winning the new act
of the year award.
Rich did OK, and got booked at about half the venues, but gave
it up after about 2 years to concentrate on the radio work (ie
he was shit at stand up). |
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We also
started writing for Weekending, a radio 4 satire show, which we both
disliked, but which actually gave us invaluable experience and the chance
to have our work assessed by actual BBC producers. So we found that
the best way into comedy was a twin assault on stand-up and radio, but
that was back in 1989, things may have changed by now.
The London circuit is certainly more crowded than it was back then and
we haven't listened to Weekending since we stopped writing for it in
1991. Other radio involvement: We wrote (with Armando Iannucci submitting
gags) all 4 episodes of Radio 4's 11.30pm comedy show The End Of The
Roadshow.
This starred Nick Hancock, Tony Hawkes, Neil Mullarkey and Rebecca Front
(Ann Bryson was in one of them) and came from Universities around the
land. (Newcastle, Glasgow, Bristol and Oxford).
It was in this show that we first used the format that was to become
our usual Fist of Fun greeting... "I'm Nick Hancock". "I'm Neil Mullarkey"
"And I am called Tony Hawkes". If you are a proper fan you will have
liked what we wrote in this and think that everything we have ever done
since is shit. You will be wrong to think that, but it makes you a proper
fan.
There is not another series in the pipeline.
We wrote and performed in Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World. This ran
to two series and featured Rebecca Front, Armando Iannucci and ex Dr
Who Tom Baker. Peter Baynham also once appeared in it for nothing saying
he loved spaghetti in a routine similar to Rod Hull's love of jelly.
We did an Edinburgh show of this series with Ronnie Ancona and Alaistair
"Jarvis Cocker" Magowan.
There are no plans to do another series of this in the pipeline, but
it might get put out on tape soon and we might do something like it
on TV one of these days (if we haven't used up all the material in Fist
of Fun - York City are Magic, the vampires, the milkman of the apocolypse,
Paul Daniels, University of Life, and many many of the lines in our
show first appeared on LNIW) We wrote for the award winning On the Hour.
We wrote about a third of the first series. Armando Iannucci, Chris
Morris, David Quantick, Steven Wells and Andrew Glover also wrote and
the cast improvised around our ideas, making it very hard to determine
who wrote what exactly.
We wrote most of the early Partridge material, most of Green Desk, most
of the serial murders stuff, all of the vicar character and things like
the Weekending piss take and most of the stuff that mentioned Lionel
Cosgrave (the name of Rich's boss in his last proper job, who was incredibly
abrasive and rude and who sacked Rich after three weeks) In the second
series we wrote less as we were writing Nimrod at the same time.
Patrick Marber started to write stuff at this point and it was a bit
of a joke amongst the writers as he didn't seem very good at the time.
But have any of the others of us written award winning plays. No. There
are no more On the Hour shows in the pipeline.
Due to us wanting to retain copyright over things we'd written we fell
out with the OTH gang. When the series went out on BBC Enterprises tape
they re-edited sentences to change the names of characters we'd made
up, and cut out all of our stuff, which was the best stuff in it anyway
as anyone will tell you.
If you have old tapes you made of OTH off the radio why not try having
fun seeing how a sentence like "Lionel Cosgrave of Glossop" is changed
to "Lionel crrrrrrrk Glossop". It is fun. (They didn't manage to edit
all our stuff off as it happens)
We did not end up writing for The Day Today because we fell out with
Armando (or rather our manager did) over how much credit we should be
given for creating characters and ideas. We did not want the performers
to be able to take characters we'd created and do other stuff with them
without us being credited. Which they did anyway. We were not given
enough guarantees, nor enough money, so we pulled out of the most successful
TV comedy series of the early 90s, and to be honest we are glad we did.
We knew it would be a success anyway as it had a fantastic team working
on it, but this freed us up to work on our own projects.
Being a writer is a lousy job. You do a lot of the work and get none
of the credit.
We are still good friends with everyone involved apart from Patrick
who seem delighted that we had been ousted when everyone else was sympathetic,
as it gave him more control over the project.
Lionel Nimrod was partially repeated on Radio 1 and then we were asked
to come up with a show especially for Radio 1. This was Fist of Fun,
the first series of which was in half hour format and recorded in front
of an audience.
Our producer, Sarah Smith, had worked with Peter Baynham on Radio 4's
The Harpoon and suggested he do his new dirty and disgusting character,
Peter Baynham, on the show (after we went on TV we called him Peter,
so as not to confuse him with the popular late night besuited satirist
from Saturday Night Armistice) .
Rebecca appeared when possible, as did Ronnie, Alistair and John Thompson.
We recorded most of the shows at Universities around the country and
when we were going to Exeter we couldn't find any actors who were prepared
to come all that way for a hundred quid (the vain creatures).
Stew mentioned this to Kevin Eldon who we had met on the stand up circuit
and Kev, who was quite poverty stricken at this stage (as indeed we
all were) jumped at the chance.
Slowly but surely he wheedled his way into the team. After this series
Radio 1 decided they didn't want anymore half hour shows and wanted
pop music in all their shows and so we moved on to an hour long slot
which we called Lee and Herring because our producer did not want to
confuse the TV people by having a radio project that was slightly different,
but with the same name.
We've done three series of this and hope to do another later this year,
if we get time. We love doing the radio show as it is quite informal
and much less hard work than the TV, but you are all wrong. The TV show
is actually better. The radio show is really live (unlike most of the
comedy radio 1 shows and quite a lot of the music shows too) although
we pre record sketches and some of the more complicated links.
In 1993 the TV blokes decided to give us a pilot show of Fist of Fun
which we recorded in May 1994 After some deliberation they gave us a
series in Spring 1995 and then after some deliberation they gave us
a second series for Feb 96 (though they only decided this in late November
so we didn't get long to write it.
We are waiting to hear if there is another series of Fist of Fun in
the pipeline.
When we were jobbing writers in the early nineties we also wrote gags
for the Barrymore pilot (which Barrymore really liked as they were taking
the piss a bit, but all his court of advisors and hangers on dissuaded
him from using any of it. He was a really good bloke though and very
funny when left to his own devices, ad libbing). We wrote some sketches
for BBC TV Schools TV about looking for work.
We wrote topical monologues for Tracey Macleod on Channel 4's "A Stab
in the Dark" which was a terrible show which we were drafted in to try
and improve. But we failed to. There is not another series of this in
the pipeline.
We've also written stuff for Spitting Image. There is not another series
of this in the pipeline.
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