Church chat and fox tales

RICHARD HERRING'S LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE PODCAST, 5TH MARCH 2024, CARDIFF SHERMAN THEATRE

Over the course of more than 500 episodes going back to May 2012, Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP to nerdy devotees like me) has cemented its status as one of the most consistently engaging, entertaining and occasionally even illuminating shows around. Each installment pitches the comedian into conversation with a guest – much less a formal, structured interview than an unpredictable, freeform ramble for the benefit of a live audience. In recent years, Herring has started taking the podcast on tour around the country, booking guests with a connection to each specific venue – and tonight it’s Cardiff’s turn.

The secret to the show’s success lies largely in its host’s unorthodox questions, fondness for gentle irreverence and verbal jousting, and penchant for making shameless personal confessions – the latter in particular inducing those sat in the opposing seat to drop their guard and reciprocate with equal candour (most famously Stephen Fry).

In many ways, then, Charlotte Church is a perfect first guest – open about her past, honest in her opinions and more than willing to indulge Herring’s silliness with a joyful cackle. She immediately makes herself comfortable, taking off her shoes and socks and curling up on the armchair with her glass of red wine like she’s settling in for an evening in front of the TV. Herring, briefly taken aback, says that he won’t follow suit for fear of offending people with his “horrible Hobbit feet” and recounting how he recently stood on a drawing pin but felt nothing – and suddenly we’re barely two minutes in and the former child superstar is talking about “necrotic flesh”. This is RHLSTP all over.

The ensuing chat charts the Llandaff lass’ fairytale discovery, stratospheric rise and extraordinary career travelling the world performing for popes, presidents and royals, among others. At times, the conversation is heavy, covering topics such as the hoarding of obscene wealth, sexualisation in the media, and Church’s struggle to escape expectations and pigeonholing and find her own voice.

But there are plenty of laughs along the way – at her declaration that, having sung at Rupert Murdoch’s wedding as a teen, she’d now happily pay to sing at his funeral; at her cautionary tale about meeting your heroes (the disillusioning experience of Kelsey Grammer talking about his young girlfriend’s diarrhoea on a Republican Party bus); at the fact that the yardstick by which her family measured her success was when adverts for her album appeared on the side of Cardiff buses.

The encounter would be most memorable for the pair’s attempt to perform Pie Jesu as a duet, were it not for Church, late on, uttering the immortal line “The Woodland Trust are cunts”. Spoken with the voice of an angel, it’s quite a statement.

Herring’s second guest of the evening is unlikely to have his face emblazoned on local public transport any time soon. Benjamin Partridge immediately acknowledges that he’s hardly a household name even in Cardiff, and speculates that Superted and Maureen from Driving School must have had prior engagements. But he’s appearing fresh from winning what the host insists on calling “the Richard Herring Award” – Best Podcast at this year’s Chortle Awards – for Three Bean Salad, created in conjunction with Henry Paker and Mike Wozniak (whose appeal, he claims, is predominantly to “horny mothers”), and hits the ground running by riffing on the idea that the onstage rug might be a magic carpet.

What follows is an hour of near-constant hilarity (aside from an interlude when the pair justifiably bemoan the dearth of creativity and unfulfilled potential of the podcast medium). Host and guest are very much on the same wavelength when it comes to comedy, with Partridge admitting that he finds humour in the relentless repetition of a stupid idea, namechecking Herring’s notorious Someone LikesYoghurt stand-up show and explaining that this is the principle behind his long-running spoof industry podcast The Beef and Dairy Network.

One of Herring’s patented Emergency Questions – “What’s the largest creature you’ve had to try to get out of your house?” – elicits not one but two fox-related anecdotes that are so funny as to cause physical pain, and another leads to the duo debating whether a self-pleasuring Russian prisoner of war might be able to escape via his own arsehole. By the time Herring has managed to hold himself together long enough to bring the evening to an end, Partridge has won himself a legion of new fans.

(An edited version of this review appeared on the Buzz website.)