Our first podcast of 2011 finds us in a reflective but ultimately positive and upbeat mood, filled with hope and good cheer for the new year and all the challenges and opportunities for change and self-improvement and spiritual fulfillment it may bring: perhaps an unnecessary and expensive hair transplant like the already financially unstable Gordon Ramsay, or an unhealthy, slightly creepy obsession with a murder case like the tabloids, or a documentary about yourself on Channel 4 like Britain's...
Jan 05, 2011
It wasn't supposed to happen, but it did, like a last little burst of Christmas fairy magic: Podcast 144, recorded on the eve of New Year's Eve 2010. It's a very special kind of Review Of The Year, in which we barely mention the year, or review it. No Chilean miners, no coalition government, no X-Factor autotuning scandal! But hey, you can have the year reviewed anywhere. And where else would you get discussion of this intellectual caliber about fat balls, Hilary Kay and The Truman Show? Happy N...
Dec 30, 2010
In a tradition that now stretches back to 2008, we join festive forces with the heavily bearded Messrs Phill Jupitus and Phil Wilding for a Festive 12: that is, an overmanned Christmas edition of their now rarer-than-a-corncrake Perfect 10. In this special, extended, laptop-recorded version of what will be an exquisitely studio-recorded and probably edited audio event, offers pretty much the same, except with about 15 minutes at either end of us getting into character in an airless booth in Cent...
Dec 22, 2010
In Podcast 143, or Podcast 202 according to the Tugwell Scale, or Podcast 203 depending on whether you include the most recent 6 Music podcast which actually became available while we were recording this one, we endure more Mac-based laptop misery when Richard's 'much better' MacBook packs up censoriously just before Richard describes in detail what he saw when a plumber showed him video footage of what was in his blocked toilet waste pipe. We can never recapture the magic of that section again,...
Dec 13, 2010
Is it Podcast 142, or is it, according to rogue podcast counter Graham Tugwell, Podcast 200? It's Podcast 142, although it may well be our 200th podcast, if you include 6 Music podcasts and other ephemera, as Graham Tugwell has done. It's a celebration either way, as Richard regresses to smutty schoolboy state and creates yet another brilliant dystopian sci-fi movie pitch based on, shall we say, geometry and biology. The Wikileaks story might dominate were it not for more pressing matters such a...
Nov 30, 2010
In Podcast 141, we face death, in the face, and not just Bernard Matthews'. Not to mention the extortionate costs of hiring a people-carrier with a ridiculous name that most people would be too embarrassed to ask for on the phone, the intricacies of our close showbiz pal Jason Manford's career-change (actually, this bit is cut off in the middle, due to a fetish fridge magnet somebody sent us as an act of sabotage), the confusingly fragrant nature of middle class female student rioters and its im...
Nov 26, 2010
In Podcast 140, or 192 if you're counting, probably, and somebody is, inaccurately, we celebrate the forthcoming Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton by recreating their now iconic pose in our photograph, even though there's no chance of us ever seeing our own engagement through to fruition, or appearing on I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here, unless the producers reconsider the rules of remuneration to include Richard's Kate Middleton-based caveat. With a weight off his shoulde...
Nov 17, 2010
In a burglarious return to Richard's attic after an extended period of podcasting in theatres, Masonic lodges, BBC studios and VW Golfs, Number 139 has a lot to process: the last ever ridiculously long and boring list of dedications to people who have given us 50p for sponsorship (yes - the last ever; deal with it); Richard's recent experience of having his life changed by an appearance on Celebrity Mastermind, a specialist subject about which we are sworn to secrecy and thus go on and on about ...
Nov 10, 2010
God save the Queen! From the unusual, slightly spooky and arcane, Da Vinci Code-style environs of the Masonic Hall in Cardiff, we present live podcast 138, which was also filmed, by Chris Evans Not That One for future inclusion of the next CH podcast CD (which we had recorded during the day: four brand new, exclusive podcasts, plus some teen poetry). This meant two things: one, that Andrew had performed a milk-it final version of Secret Dancing as the first half and was emotionally drained by th...
Nov 04, 2010
Collings and Herrin Podcast 137, belated, comes from the Bristol Old Vic Jam festival. Recorded in front of a patient and helpful audience at the Studio, not the main theatre, because we were 'in the round' we opted to move around, a quarter at a time, every 15 minute, so as to spread ourselves out over the full circle of the audience. It was a lovely audience, a real living 'hive mind' Wikipedia - whose knowledge actually stretched to a man called John explaining the answer to Andrew's cryptic ...
Oct 28, 2010
A surprise, unbilled, bonus, you-lucky-people podcast 136, recorded once again in the soundproof booth at 6 Music, once again with the red light on the wall mysteriously coming on halfway through. It's a funny one, and not necessarily in the ha-ha sense of the word. Andrew is in a very grouchy mood, and nothing Richard can do - call him an idiot, mock him, belittle him, argue with him, berate him for liking Stewart Lee - will lift his gloomy cloud. Except for one thing, which Richard does right ...
Oct 03, 2010
In Podcast 135, recorded live at London's Bloomsbury Theatre, we began the show with an almost empty front row, which, after the interval, filled out a little bit, giving us some purchase on the audience, who were remarkably sweet, only booed Andrew twice, Tweeted heckles about our physical appearance, allowed us into their worlds, made 'some noise', and only one of them seemed to be concealing a weapon in a rustly carrier bag. Subjects ranged from Nazi helmets on sale in Turkey, Jeremy Clarkson...
Sep 28, 2010
As if a week has passed, which it hasn't, since Podcast 133, here's another one, mostly devoted to Michael McInytre, but not in the way you think. In fact, in order to save up all the Opik-style funnies for Monday, when we take the podcast to the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, we make today's a serious discussion about fame, recognition and the comedy industry, at the top of which sits the blameless and actually very nice and funny Michael McIntyre. Fuelled only by half a lasagne, we also build a...
Sep 23, 2010
In Collings and Herrin Podcast 133, recorded in a professional BBC studio at 6 Music, but not on it, after our Saturday morning show, is a curious affair, moving inexorably between the Pope, Kenneth Kendall, The Inbetweeners, Dolly the sheep, breast feeding, stoat teeth, Jamie Oliver's new baby, Jack Black, Richard's new look, the fact that we are both falling apart, hessian vests, the etiquette of meeting your old tuturs, the etiquette of asking a complete stranger to take your trunks off in th...
Sep 19, 2010
Refreshed after a two-week break, we reconvene, reunite, restore, restart ... sorry, we have become obsessed with the Times cryptic crossword, and everything now feels like a clue ... back in Richard's attic for Podcast 132, an anagram of 123, and despite his decision to wear a suit for the occasion, a relaxed, chat-show vibe permeates our low-key reunion, rematch, revival, reupholstering ... sorry. There is Wayne Rooney's poor choice of prostitute to discuss, plus his poor grasp of cigarette pr...
Sep 05, 2010
LOST PODCAST 123 UNLOST - WARNING AUDIOPHILES: quality is useless. For completists only. A fuzzy bootleg of the legendary lost Collings and Herrin podcast has suddenly come to light. What kind of lunatic would bootleg a podcast that was being recorded and distributed for free and then keep it to themselves for 3 weeks before sending it in? Christopher Johnson, that's who. And we are grateful to him. And only a little afraid. So now alas you will get to hear, if you listen very carefully, that we...
Sep 03, 2010
Edinburgh Extra! Andrew is in London, but that doesn't stop Richard pumping out another podcast. This one is a recording of him reading from and discussing his book, 'How Not To Grow Up' at Word Power bookshop, West Nicholson St, Edinburgh (it's really great there - do go if you can). There's 4 extracts from the book, plus some discussion of the themes and how it was written and then a question and answer session with the audience. Richard may have been using his phone voice in this one, because...
Aug 25, 2010
In the final live Collings and Herrin Podcast from the GRV in Edinburgh, we go out in a significant lack of style. We should have ended it after 130, but no, it was almost as if we were committed to do 131, and treated it as just that: an obligation, with no joy or narrative denouement whatsoever, despite a big pile of prizes for the nicest audience members, including a Millie's Cookies loyalty card, an Apostrophe (whatever that is) loyalty card, a McDonald's loyalty card and a Piemaker loyalty ...
Aug 22, 2010
Family entertainment is the order of the day for live podcast 130, live from the GRV in Edinburgh, where David Milliband's banana is gazed upon with wonder and confusion. Richard Herrin was eclipsed by the much nicer Richard Herring, who was not only nice to the entire tattooed family in the front row, he offered his own hand in marriage to the mum, so that he could be a thoughtful stepfather to her children, and her son's girlfriend. Meanwhile, Andrew accidentally says the rudest thing, and is ...
Aug 21, 2010
A mood of niceness prevails over Podcast 129, seventh out of ten live shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, except for the bits about golden showers, which means 'playful' Richard is full of compliments to at least one couple in the front row, gives another couple a relatively light grilling - mainly because one of them is carrying a big stick - and actually admits to Andrew that his solo show is 'quite good'. We have harmless family fun with the Wankdorf stadium in Bern, Switzerland; Posh and Becks Be...
Aug 20, 2010
With podcast 128, recorded live at the GRV in Edinburgh in front of a mute and frightened audience, we attempt to bring the whole enterprise crashing down around our ears, in an elaborate and more esoteric version of what Aberdeen's Dave Whitney did at the Canon's Gait gig to a punter at the bar. With Richard now embittered into a perverse version of humility after being bullied by Stewart Lee in his silver jubilee year and Andrew shattered by Richard's determination to break the first rule of i...
Aug 19, 2010
We're back for the second of the two five-day batches of Collings and Herrin live podcasts from the GRV in Edinburgh, and what a return! Not only is Richard knackered after the excesses of producing As It Occurs To Me in 'Jimmy hats' and a bath salts-insensible Andrew unable to make a single joke, even one about a man who is hungry living in Hungary, but Tony Blair's blood advance proves a subject too serious to provide any humour whatsoever, and Cannon and Ball weren't even to blame for making ...
Aug 18, 2010
In the fifth of our live Edinburgh podcasts - podcast 126 - we recreate, in full, an entire episode of the American sitcom Friends. We also solve the blue towel mystery, improve Anglo-Australian relations immeasurably, rewrite the pronunciation of some popular names, the occasional naked lady on the cover of the Sunday Times magazine, the half-inch of underskirt Andrew glimpsed when Sarah Jane Smith fell over on the Giant Robot episode of Doctor Who, David Beckham's sister's empty wheelie bin an...
Aug 15, 2010
In the fourth Live Collings and Herring Podcast from the GRV at the Edinburgh Fringe, Podcast 125, we are still trying to process the loss of Podcast 123, which leapt, like Scrappy the dog, from the equivalent of a ledge in a Dracula castle in Aberdeenshire and was never seen or heard from again. Unbelievable! We also berate 'the most disgusting woman in Britain', Carla Bruni, the right wing Americans who object to someone building something two blocks from the non-existent shadow of the Twin To...
Aug 14, 2010
The lights are back on! After the mythical Podcast 123, which may never have existed in the first place, we are back at the GRV in Edinburgh and undefeated by either electricity or electrical appliances. In either the third or second live podcast of the Fringe, after a cathartic shouting match about the washing up, we find out how to smoke 'rocks' of 'crack' 'cocaine' in the Daily Mail, put the clocks forward with David Cameron, discover Iggy Pop's attitude to pants and socks, give out cuttings ...
Aug 13, 2010
APOLOGY: Unless you were among the 80 or so quiet and judgmental people who attended the live recording of Podcast 123 - numerically historic - you will not be able to experience it in your ears. Because GarageBand broke. Naturally, as those who were there will confirm (it's a bit like being at the Sex Pistols gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall), it was the best podcast ever recorded, and at no point did we dither or alienate the audience or make idiots of ourselves by talking about Wet Ones,...
Aug 12, 2010
In the first of ten live podcasts recorded at the GRV at the Edinburgh Fringe (but still officially number 122), we set the scene for our tenure in the land of the incomprehensible town name: the Young Ones-style flat, Justin Moorhouse's role as the kitchen Buddha, the capacity of the tall bedrooms to accommodate a human pyramid featuring Tom Wrigglesworth and the tallest of the Penny Dreadfuls, and the intrigue of the washing up rota. Coping with the very real possibility of a beer-batter-relat...
Aug 11, 2010
In number 121, our last podcast before Edinburgh - so a week off next week! - we catch up with the Russian parasailing donkey, come up with a porn name for Toy Story 3, create a Utopian vision of how the remake of The A-Team might unite parent and child, or parent and bag of sperm, investigate the embalming properties of Vocalzone pastilles, wonder what would happen if Russell Brand became locked to Richard's girlfriend in death and Richard got off with Katy Perry at their joint funeral, and kee...
Jul 28, 2010
Back! Back! Back! Yes! It's the Collings and Herrin Reunion Podcast, number 120, featuring Andrew Collins and Richard Herring in the same room, sharing air and surfaces in complete viral safety. Richard feels like a new man since his purge and is sanguine and circumspect about the fact that he is not the 173rd best comedian ever to go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival according to an Australian lager that has only just started sponsoring it. He still hates squirrels, though, and wild dogs, while ...
Jul 21, 2010
A unique podcasting experiment! Because Andrew was too scared to go to Richard's house, which he believes to be rampant with the norovirus on every surface, they decided to record this week's podcast in quarantined conditions: Richard's in his fetid attic, Andrew's in a soundproofed room at the Radio Times office. Neither has listened to the other's half yet. In Richard's half he goes into what might be too much detail about a very dirty weekend away with his girlfriend in Suffolk. Those of a se...
Jul 13, 2010
