Richard Herring Leicester Square Theatre Show, interview, video…

February 10th, 2015 by Ben Goldacre in interviews, video | 1 Comment »

I took great pride in the fact that my book Bad Science was first reviewed by Viz and the British Medical Journal. In that vein, here’s a 90 minute interview I did on stage with comedian Richard Herring in the Leicester Square Theatre. I have bad hair, we cover a lot of dorky material – epidemiology, medical politics, smears, govt statistics, evidence based policy – he keeps steering the conversation back to my penis. I think it’s an interesting format.

As a side note, the RHLSTP podcasts are an interesting financial model: he charges for tickets on the door of the Leicester Square Theatre, which makes money, and then gives the video and audio away for free/donations/money (lots of good episodes, Steve Coogan, Victoria Coren, Stephen Fry etc). He did the same thing for a topical sketch show recorded live in the Bloomsbury Theatre, and it’s a fun mix of free and paid activity (speaking of which, buy my new book for a friend, and my older ones).

As far as I can tell, Richard Herring also leaves no thought unpublished, with a blog post and podcast or two every day. This reminds me of an interview I once saw (or at least, half remember) where Ray Davies was asked how he writes so many good songs. Every day without fail, he replied, I write a whole song: sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad, but they always have three verses, a chorus, an intro, an ending, and a bridge.

Finally, for background, the penis questions are a recurring feature every week in the show, not my own preoccupation.

 


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One Response



  1. C Curtis-Rose said,

    April 7, 2015 at 5:59 pm

    Great show, but if you have to keep your Christmas cake in the freezer, there’s not enough booze in it.