Since I've already reviewed Stewart Lee's incisive dissection of stand up comedy, How I Escaped My Certain Fate, it seems only fair to take a look at what his former partner in crime, Richard Herring, is up to these days.
How Not To Grow Up (both titles begin with the word 'How' - obviously in tribute to Fred Dinenage) is a far more personal affair than Stewart Lee's book, but that's entirely what you'd expect if you're familiar with the former Fist Of Funners' work. While Lee was always the cool, detached one, Herring has made a career out of exposing his every foible to the spotlight. This then is the warts and all story of him turning 40 and the mid-life crisis that follows...
I couldn't be nearly 40, I still felt like I was 20... unless I was walking up some stairs. I couldn't be that old. My calendar must be malfunctioning. Surely it was just a couple of months ago that I left university to start my journey into the adult world. I felt like one of those unfortunate people who fall into a coma as a teenager and wake up to find that while they feel the same they have missed two decades of their life, their bodies have aged and the world has moved on without them. Except I hadn't fallen into a coma. I'd been awake for at least six hours a day, every day, for the last two decades. How hadn't I noticed the sands of time swirling away? Or that Margaret Thatcher was no longer Prime Minister?
I turn 39 this year, so the above doesn't just hit a nerve, it repeatedly pummels that nerve with a huge comedy mallet until it's begging for mercy. Much of this book echoes my own ongoing midlife crisis, and though painful and embarrassing for the writer, it is hugely cathartic for the reader. Herring is unflinching in his depiction of the cavalier, self-centred, responsibility-free life he leads - excessive drinking, casual sex, his desperate quest for a threesome, sitting on the sofa in his pants masturbating to internet porn at 3 in the afternoon (!) - but also bears his soul about the fact that this isn't the life he really wants. Somehow he manages to turn things around, and his journey will have you cheering... though by far the more interesting and amusing sections of the book are those featuring an unhappy narrator. When things finally start to go right for him in the last few chapters... well, who wants to read about somebody getting everything they want out of life? That's just bleedin' depressing...
