After sorting out politics (Hitler Moustache), religion (Christ on a Bike), love (What is Love, Anyway?) and penises (Talking Cock) Herring's tenth consecutive stand-up show tackles the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns (apart from Jesus and that canoe bloke).

Is death a tragedy or an excuse to have an extended lie-in?

Are we snuffed out or forced to endure eternity without bodily pleasures?

Death is inevitable, so let's laugh in its face while our hearts still beat and our jaws are still attached.

Notes towards Comedy Vehicle Series three.

Work in progress.
"Lee is not allowing reviewers into his show as it is "work in progress".
That's "work in progress" as in charge audiences to see it, but it's not ready enough for people to read about." (David Lister, Independent, Aug 2009).

"Betraying the original spirit of the Fringe famous comedians, like Stewart Lee, ban critics from their shows saying that the show, for which punters still have to pay to gain entry, is merely "work in progress"" (David Lister, Independent, Aug 2012).

It's an object of shame and pride; it can inspire laughter and fear; it's a symbol of power, yet it's incredibly fragile and weak; it can be a pound of flesh or an ounce of winkles, it can be used to express both love and hate; it creates life, it can condemn us to death... and it can do wees as well.

How can one tiny flap of sponge and sinew be all these things?

Richard Herring, "The King of Edinburgh" (The List), returns to the Fringe in his Silver Jubilee year (he first performed here in 1987) to find out all about men and their spam javelins, in this reworking of his smash-hit 2002 show, Talking Cock.

What can a sexless middle aged married man, whose life now consists mainly of watching Scooby Doo cartoons with a four year old boy, possibly find to write comedy about?
Formerly stand-up's youthful iconoclast, Lee now gawps blankly at News 24 as Britain burns down around him, and blinks weirdly at the vast wayside retail outlets during endless journeys to and from increasingly indistinct provincial theatres.
Once he lived on the pleasure planet.
Now he is trapped in Carpet Remnant World. And so are you.

"The most exciting comedian in the country, bar none." The Times ****
"The greatest comedian in the country has done it again." GQ
"Thrilling" Metro *****
"About as funny as bubonic plague" The Sun

So asked the insane, Welsh, poet-philosopher, Howard Jones in 1983.
But in the intervening 28 years no one has dared to answer his questions.
Until now.
Comedian Richard Herring returns to Edinburgh for his 20th Fringe and 32nd show.
Having sorted out religion (Christ on a Bike), politics (Hitler Moustache) and penises (Talking Cock), the star of award winning podcast As It Occurs To Me and Radio 4's Richard Herring's Objective seeks to define and destroy love. Before love destroys him. Again.
Is love just a chemical reaction in our brains by which our body selects potential sexual partners or is it a magical force which guides us unerringly to our soul mate, oddly usually waiting until we're off our tits at a night club to do so?
Could a romantic gesture involving Ferrero Rocher chocolates get so out of control as to destroy the economic infrastructure of the United Kingdom?
Is the word being devalued if Richard's dry cleaner claims to "love" all his customers, or is he actually only enamoured with Herring and too shy to tell him directly?
"What is love, anyway?" is a heart-warmingly honest and personal examination of the romantic (and not so romantic) adventures and misadventures of the UK's most prolific comedian, as well as a genuine attempt to define this mysterious, debilitating, evil and wondrous emotion.

Flickwerk (German for "Patchwork") was Stew's Edinburgh show of 2011

A work in progress 'new material' hour at The Stand saw the genesis of ideas & routines that would later make up the touring show, Carpet Remnant World, which opened in London the following November.

Jesus Christ - Son of God! Saviour of mankind! Superstar!
Richard Herring - Son of Keith, a retired headmaster! Once saved a spider that had become trapped in his bath, only crushing three of its legs in the process! Hosted 10 episodes of a chatshow about poker on a satellite channel which subsequently closed down! At first sight they have little in common.
Or do they?
Now ten years older than the Messiah when he died, has Herring achieved as much with his life?
"Last year the show was about Hitler. This year it's about Jesus. My target audience is clearly Pope Benedict."
Along the way he asks all the great theological questions:
Why did Jesus always call Simon, "Peter"? Was it the same as the way Trigger always called Rodney "Dave"?
What ever happened to the Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh? Wouldn't they have made a humble biblical family like the Christs wealthy beyond their wildest dreams?
What happened to Lazarus the second time he died?
How many weeks would you have to attend Roman Catholic Holy Communion before you had consumed an entire Jesus?

Ragbag of new material. Work in progress for a 2011 TV series.
See it first so you can begin the backlash, already initiated here.

What the critics said about last year’s show, also previewed at The Stand: -

‘The award for the worst comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival goes to Stewart Lee, about as funny as bubonic plague’ Fergus Shanahan, Sun
‘His material has had the sting taken out of it by over-exposure in the media’ Laura Davis, Liverpool Post
‘His whole tone is one of complete smug condescension’ Roz Laws, Birmingham Mercury

Will Richard Herring do anything in the name of comedy? The stout Fringe veteran, whose cult status was elevated by television stardom in the 1990s as one half of Lee and Herring, once tried to steal Germaine Greer's bra. Now he's grown a Hitler moustache.

This hair-raising task was undertaken to reclaim the iconography of the facial accessory, taking it away from Hitler and giving it back to Charlie Chaplin, two contemporaries whose careers, "it's fair to say, dropped off after the Second World War."

Reclaiming Chaplin's moustache for comedy, 'Headmaster's Son' star muses on iconography, the positive side of racism and why an innocent square inch of facial hair took the blame for Nazism.

A new touring show, from the comedian currently fashionable amongst broadsheet newspaper critics due to his BBC2 series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.
Stew says, “In this show, an account of something that happened to me in a coffee shop will be used as a convenient framing device for disparate material possibly concerning English Heritage, Top Gear, The Olympics, emigration, prawns, Bella Pasta, The National Trust, farmers, DH Lawrence, piglets, cathedrals, bees, Iggy Pop, cider adverts, riots etc etc.”
As usual, expect …
1) Some punchy stuff near the top 2) inexplicable hostility towards relatively innocuous figures
3) silences 4) repetition 5) sudden and/or gradual shifts in tone, velocity and volume
6) long routines experimenting with form rather than content 7) the possibility of failure 8) a quasi-serious bit at the end. 9) New for 2009! A song!

What's worse than being a podgy, swotty, virginal schoolboy? What if your dad's the headmaster too?

Fist of Fun and Oh F***, I'm 40 star relives childhood embarrassments, first love and belching during the minute's silence in church.

What are the psychological repercussions of schooldays filled with suspicion and mistrust?

"Smart and effective" Chortle

In 2009, Stewart is filming his first TV series for a decade, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, for BBC2.
Scrambled Egg attempts to hone six twenty minute routines for TV.

An audience member will chose three of six numbered eggs from an egg box, and the corresponding routines will be performed.

Scrambled Egg has no through-line, no beginning, no middle, no end, no meaning and no point, other than the presentation, in random order, of three of a possible six routines nightly.

The new comedy by Stewart Lee with Simon Munnery as Queen Elizabeth I and Miles Jupp as Sir Walter Raleigh.

Raleigh introduces Elizabeth, the wittiest, wisest and most unforgiving of English Queens.

Walter is in love with Elizabeth, the spiritual embodiment of England. But will he end up in her bed, or will he lose his head?Potatoes, tobacco, Elizabethan dance, cross-dressing, xenophobia and laughs galore from the team behind 2007’s Johnson And Boswell: Late But Live.

Directed by Owen Lewis.

TMWRNJ star waves goodbye to his youth and awaits the blessed relief of death as he celebrates 40 years of life and the 20th anniversary of his first Fringe.

Richard Herring is a 40-year-old middle-class man who’s dodged the responsibility of a wife, children or a career in a sensible job in favour of the flippant field of comedy, where he can act as if he’s a perpetual teenager, despite the overwhelming physical evidence the contrary.

This show will soon be available on DVD via Go Faster Stripe.

In 2007, Stewart Lee was voted the 41st best stand-up of all time in an official Channel 4 poll, apparently better than Lenny Bruce but not as good as Jim Davidson.
But what real difference does this accolade make?
His TV pilot has been cancelled, his mother still thinks the 1970s game show host Tom O’Connor is funnier than him, and he’s been booked to perform stand-up for a conference of insect scientists for no money, while dressed as an aphid.
Lucky for us, the more frustrating Stewart’s life becomes, the funnier he gets.

This show is now available on DVD through Real Talent. Order it here.

Doctor Johnson is one of England’s greatest literary figures: poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer, legendary curmudgeon and coffee house philosopher. In 1773 he was enticed by his Scottish friend James Boswell to accompany him on a tour through the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland.
Both published books based on the journey.
Johnson described his experience of Scotland. Boswell described Scotland’s experience of Johnson. Late But Live gives the two bilious bores the chance to try and flog their travel guides to a new audience, 230 years after they made their journey. Boswell hosts a book launch, interviewing Johnson, discussing Scotland ancient and modern, and taking questions from the audience. Haggis is eaten. Pipes are played. And sacred Highland cattle are ritually slaughtered.

Stew co-wrote Interiors with Johnny Vegas for the Manchester International Festival 2007, it was directed by Robert Thirtle.

It took place in a house
Ticket holders were put on a specially-chartered bus outside the Festival Pavilion twice a day which took them to the house/venue where Jeffrey Parkin (Vegas) showed them around - with a view to sell it.

He's anxious to sell up so he can move to Montenegro but is equally anxious to point out the unique qualities of the house he’s been busy renovating.
Read more on Stew's site, here.

Judas is best known as the betrayer of Christ, but here he explains his position using words, rope and food.
Stew describes this show as "a pretentious one-man theatre piece, not the kind of laugh-filled gag-fests I do as a stand-up. Yes, I am the new Daniel Kitson".
In actual fact, the show simply retells the Judas' story from his own point of view, with Stewart narrating in the first person as Judas.
Not as scurrilous as it might sound, perhaps - but still a very entertaining & thoughtful show.

Stew released a 3-CD "Official Bootleg" set of the show through GoFaster Stripe, and you can buy it here.
You can also download a copy of the work-in-progress script at Stew's official site, here.

Ménage à un sees Herring consolidate his position as one of the UK’s most uncompromising and innovative stand-ups in a show which deals with loneliness, only-ness and Onanism, and attempts to determine whether three-in-a-bed sex romps are really better than one-in-a-bed sex romps.

Along the way he reveals why Olivio is the most dangerous spread for the confirmed bachelor, claims that we can save humanity by having sex with sea creatures and discusses the existential angst of being a comedy character who exists solely to deliver a disappointing punch-line.

He also provides the correct solution to the Riddle of the Sphinx, proposes that the English should rename apples ‘sky potatoes’ in order to demonstrate the ultimate folly of the French, and controversially calls for the disenfranchisement of the stupid.
This show is available on DVD thanks to Go Faster Stripe. Get it off their website at THIS LINK

The play was written by Eric Bogosian and is directed by Stewart Lee (his first play since Jerry Springer - The Opera) In the mid 80's, when reality television and shock jock radio didn't even figure in a card-carrying liberal's most frenzied nightmare, the cult American character comedian and performance artist Eric Bogosian penned his play Talk Radio.
Today it no longer reads as a prophecy of broadcasting excess, but as a blackly funny portrayal of the roots of where we went wrong. Or where we went right. Depending on your point of view.

Set at an Ohio radio station, acclaimed stand-up Phil Nicol takes the roll of a late night talk show host Barry Champlain.
Seven more acclaimed comic performers including Mike McShane play thirty-seven characters, in a phantasmagoric bestiary of ordinary Americans. Racists, perverts, transvestites, drug addicts, and Christians. Ordinary, everyday folks. Just like you and I.

Richard Herring's 2005 Edinburgh Festival offering, the title of which is taken from an encounter with a shocked checkout girl in a branch of Sainsburys (see Warming Up - 26th January 2004).

In "Someone Likes Yoghurt", Herring defends himself against the malicious yoghurt-based rumours that have been blighting his life, proposes a less sorrowful magpie reward system, and explains why he applied for the job of Pope, despite his atheism & desire to destroy all world religions.

This show is available on DVD thanks to Go Faster Stripe. Get it off their website at THIS LINK

Stewart Lee's follow up to 2004's "Stand Up Comedian" sees him dealing with the religious backlash of Jerry Springer The Opera's TV broadcast in an unashamedly combatative style.
Almost intentionally courting controversy, were such a thing not beneath him, Lee deals with the London Bombings of 2005, Joe Pasquale's theft of other comedians' material, endoscopies, coping with being a figure of hatred to 60,000 fundamentalist christians, and why you shouldn't read Dan Brown's work.
All of this leads to an incendiary climax involving a drunken night in a small village somewhere in The Midlands, Jesus Christ, and vomit. This show is now available on DVD thanks to Go Faster Stripe. Get it off their website at THIS LINK

Richard Herring is going through a mid-life crisis.
Depressed and disorientated after having split up with his girlfriend, moved house and been stricken with writer's block, he resolves to take inspiration from the bust of Hercules that graces the front of his new home and perform twelve impossible or arduous labours in the hope of giving his 37 years on this planet some kind of meaning.

Will the small, fat man from Somerset prove that he is a match for the bronzed and toned Roman demi-god?
Or, more likely, will he not?
This show is available on DVD thanks to Go Faster Stripe. Get it off their website at THIS LINK

Stewart Lee's 2004 return to standup comedy deals with his 3 year absence, and the time he spent in musical theatre.

As well as the film director Ang Lee, September 11th 2001, and "proved with lacerating insight that people dislike Ben Elton even more than Osama Bin Laden.

At least the latter, he said, has "lived his life to some consistent set of ethical principles".

This show is available on DVD. Get it at THIS LINK

It has been known by many different names to many different people: knob, dick, schmuck, tool, percy, John Thomas, the bald headed mouse, the yoghurt-spitting sausage, the sperm javelin, the sentimental teaser, the crimson butterfly...

It inspires lust, fear, awe and laughter. And yet, it is an object of shame and when engorged, indecency. It can be a pound of flesh or an ounce of winkles. It can be used to express both love and hate.
It can create life. It can condemn us to death...And it can do wees as well.
How can one little flap of sponge and sinew be all these things? You will be surprised how little you know about the skin chimney, because although men may constantly brag and exaggerate about their little chap, they rarely talk about their feelings for it.
At last, Richard Herring reveals the truth about man and his manhood in the 21st century.
Buy Rich's book based on the show here.

Jerry Springer The Opera is the brain-child of Richard Thomas, who first performed sections of it in early 2001.
Stewart Lee came on board to add words and direct.
It was worked up at Battersea Arts Centre & the Edinburgh Festival over subsequent years until finding a home in it's finished form at the National Theatre on London's South Bank.
It played there between April & September 2003 before moving to the west end and the Cambridge Theatre in November 2003.
Along the way, it picked up 4 Laurence Olivier Awards, along with a respectable collection of Critics Choice awards and various other accolades.
Mass controversy ensued when the opera was broadcast on January 8, 2005 as part of an evening of Jerry Springer-themed programming on BBC2.
Christian Voice & other right wing campaigners whipped up a storm that would ultimately send several BBC staff into hiding and derail the intended UK tour of the musical.
In November 2005, a DVD of the version filmed for broadcast was released in the UK.
Buy it online here.

This year Richard Herring realised that he was the same age of Jesus when he died.
But has he achieved as much as the supposed Messiah?
Some would argue not. But one man dares argue otherwise.
The fact that that man is Herring himself should not be allowed to cloud the issue.

During the hour, Herring will attempt to recreate - and top - some of Jesus's most famous miracles, including turning water into wine, curing a range of maladies (this may cost extra) and feeding the entire audience with one deep fried Mars bar.
The script can be found at Rich's site here & Rich reprised the show as "Christ On A Bike: The Second Coming" in 2010.

Pea Green Boat was a show Stewart Lee wrote and performed about the life of Edward Lear, his poem The Owl and the Pussycat, and Stew's own personal paranoia induced by various professional disappointments and the failure of my plumbing system.

It ran for a week at the end of 2001 at the Battersea Arts Centre as a workshop performance, for a week in its finished form at The Traverse in Edinburgh in the summer of 2002, and for three weekends in Jan/Feb 2003 again at the Battersea Arts Centre.

An audio version of this is now available on CD at Go Faster Stripe.
Get it off their website at THIS LINK.

Stew's own site describes 2000's "Badly Mapped World" as "Lee's last ditch attempt to write a stand-up show which can transcend stand-up limitations".

It also marked the first time he ever actually made money performing at the Edinburgh Festival.

Also, according to the site, national critics were to cite this show in giving Stew his first bad reviews.

Punters, however, loved it.

Set in Fiji, this play by Richard Herring looks at Nostradamus' prediction of apocalypse in July 1999.

Co-incidentally it was first performed at the 1999 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The writing of this show became the subject of "Herring In Fiji", a documentary for the now-defunct cable channel, BBC Choice, which Rich has recently excavated for a DVD extra on the 3rd disc of his 3-DVD set for "Christ On A Bike: The Scond Coming", which you can buy here.

The script for the show can be found at Rich's site here.

Edinburgh 1998's solo offering from Stewart Lee.

A review of the show describes it as follows:

A neat little tale of thirtysomething college friends trying to make sense of their lives, it's distinguished by the way Herring makes a real effort to define the participants in the story as distinct characters, rather splitting a stand-up monologue arbitrarily between six people. There's some ferociously good observation at work here - during a rather tense reconciliation scene following a big argument, Putner's character suggests that they try to make the moment less tense by talking in Northern regional accents - and the jokes are pretty damn fine.
If I ever want to express extreme displeasure at something in the future, I suspect I'll be using the line "I'd rather rim Ann Widdecombe" from now on.......

The script can be found at Rich's site here.

Edinburgh 1998 - a one-off lecture on why American Comedy Sucks.

Richard Herring's 1997 Edinburgh Festival offering. described on his own website as follows:

"another semi-autobiographical number, based on my time on archaeological gigs in the mid-eighties. I was in it, doing an unpleasant full frontal nude scene and the other actors were Paul "The Putt" Putner, Trevor Lock and Natalie Brandon who would later become Trevor and Natalie from TMWRNJ and Catherine Hood who'd been in the Oxford Revue all those years ago. It was directed by Dan Milne.

I think it's a really good and commercial play, where the fact that nothing much happens is the strength of it. It's about how people pass time as much as anything.
Again I was incorrectly accused of stringing together stand up routines. Again I say that every conversation fits in with the themes of the play.
The effect the full frontal nude scene has on an audience is hard to glean from a reading. I am glad that I did it. It was very liberating."
You can download the script from Rich's own website here.

August 1997's solo Stewart Lee Edinburgh show, "King Dong vs Moby Dick" was notable for the very first Edinburgh appearance of "The Mighty Boosh", who appeared as King Dong & Moby Dick respectively.

Stew would continue to work with, script edit & direct for the Boosh in future years.

The show itself involved combined the stories of Captain Ahab from Moby Dick, the Porn Actor King Dong & the parents of tragic ecstasy girl, Leah Betts in an attempt to conjure the spirit of the white whale, Moby Dick.

Oblomov was originally a novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859.
The title character is often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a stereotypical character in 19th-century Russian literature.
He is a young, generous nobleman who seems incapable of making important decisions or undertaking any significant actions. Throughout the novel he rarely leaves his room and famously fails to leave his bed for the first 150 pages.
The book was considered a satire of Russian nobility whose social and economic function was increasingly in question in mid-nineteenth century Russia.
The novel was wildly popular when it came out in Russia and a number of its characters and devices have had an imprint on Russian culture and language. Numerous adaptions have been made for the stage, notably a 1964 production starring Spike Milligan.
In 1996, Stewart Lee, Ben Moor, Andrew Mackay & Emma Kennedy featured in an Edinburgh production of the show.

This was Richard Herring's first play, and was about a group of friends who meet up to go and see the Sex Pistols reunion show.
From Rich's website: "I was in it, along with Ewan Bailey (who recently played a man hiring a prostitute on Eastenders), Paul Reynolds (from Press Gang), Paul Putner (Curious Orange) and Jason Freeman (Steve from TGP).
It was directed by Jeremy Herrin who has directed most of my solo projects since then and who I partly employed because he nearly has the same name as me.
It was pretty well reviewed and received well by the public.

Cheeky Alan Supple who is mentioned in the play is named after an old flat-mate from college"
You can view the script on Rich's site, here.

Rich's Edinburgh show of 1995, you can download both the programme & the script from Rich's official site where he has the following to say about it:

"Sally Phillips was in this, as was Tom Binns, who memorably turned up late for one show and someone had to do his lines from backstage.
We just about got away with it".

You can download the script from Rich's own website here.

Touring on the back of the "Fist Of Fun" radio & TV series, Rich & Stew took to the road for this tour.

Starting off at that year's Edinburgh Festival.

This tour feature the gig at The Cochrane Theatre in September 1995 that was filmed & released on BBC video as "Lee & Herring Live" which you can get as an extra on the first series DVD of Fist Of Fun.

The flyer to the left is advertising the Second run of This Morning With Richard Not Judy, but the show itself actually dates back to a Richard Herring solo show from the Edinburgh Fringe in 1994.
Over time, the live show expanded to incorporate elements that would later become familiar to viewers of the TV series of the same name, but initially it was a largely improvised affair that relied on a lot of interaction with the audience.

Rich recounts his humiliation of audience member and minor TV celebrity Les Dennis as both the proudest and most shameful moment of his career.
The main element that made it to the TV version of the show was the "King Of The Show" feature, in which Rich & Stew would select an audience member using hastily designated guidelines & pamper them throughout the set.

"I'm Richard Herring and this is my fat!

The albatross around my waist, the tenth circle of hell, my lifetime membership card for the Jolly, harmless, but a bit of a sad joke club.

I'd love to believe that it is just the society we live in that means fat people are derided. For in the kingdom of the deaf, the one eyed man will have difficulty making himself understood and wish he'd never left that nice blind kingdom where they all treated him so well. And political correctness tells me I should be proud to be podgy. pleased to be plump, positive about my pot-belly..."

Richard Herring is Fat was about how Rich had put on two stone in the previous twelve months.
You can read the script at Rich's site here.
It also featured Sally Phillips and Kevin Eldon.

Stew's 1994 Edinburgh Festival show

In 1993 Stewart co-founded CLUUB ZARATHUSTRA with Simon Munnery, The League Against Tedium.

Designed to showcase non-stand-up it developed the dreaded cult following and lost thousands of pounds in both Edinburgh and London over the following five years.
There's a great site about it here.

Stew considers it both the best and worst thing he ever worked on, and over the years featured Kevin Eldon, Roger Mann, Sally Phillips, a great theatre group called Universal Grinding Wheel, Richard Herring, Dr Who Peter Davidson, Johnny Vegas, Bridget Nicholls, some of The Medieval Babes, Kombat Opera, Jason Freedman, Julian Barratt, Tom Binns, and Dan Rhodes, (who now writes under-appreciated fiction). A Book on Cluub Z has been written by Robert Wringham, and you can buy it via GoFasterStripe, here.

From Rich Herring's Website; "Ra-Ra-Rasputin which was the life story of
Rasputin set to the music of Boney M (years before Mama Mia or We Will Rock You) I lost weight and learned to dance in order to play the character.

The show also featured Andrew Mackay who is the Prof from Time Gentlemen Please, Sally Phillips from Smack the Pony, Ben Moor and Clare de Vries (who wrote a book about going round America with her cat, I think).
It was a crazy show, with complicated dancing on the tiniest of stages. Though hardly anyone who saw it, hundreds of people have told me how great it was.
William Cook from the Guardian was a big fan of it.
Unfortunately the rest of the Perrier committee that year thought it was shit, so nothing ever became of it." - Though, as of 2012, Rich is turning this idea into a sitcom script...

A stage version of the Radio series (which you can download here) which was performed at the Edinburgh Festival 1993.

Rich & Stew performed again, but Rebecca Front and Armando Iannucci were unavailable.

Their replacements were Alistair MacGowan & Ronnie Ancona.

An Edinburgh sketch show featuring Rich & Stew, Simon Munnery, Patrick Marber and Steve Coogan.
Seemingly the source of ill-feeling between the duo & Patrick Marber, Rich comments on his website; "...it should have been brilliant. But we argued a lot about what should go in and who should play what (I think Patrick thought he should play everything!) At a time when my confidence in performing was very low, Patrick's criticism of my acting was very depressing. I really thought the show could have worked and we'd written some great sketches (including one about a club for people called Ian) but we all essentially gave up on it and Stew (particularly) fell out with Patrick.
Late in the run a TV producer came and was keen to make it into a TV show.

Suddenly Patrick decided the show was a great idea. But it was too late. Coogan won the Perrier with his other show, directed by Marber."

The Comedy Zone is a package show set up in 1990 to introduce new talent to Edinburgh Festival audiences. Still going at the time of writing (2014), the Zone generally features four new acts each year.

In 1991, it featured Stewart Lee, Simon Munnery, Mark Lamarr & double act Chris & George.

Other acts taking part over the years have included Ray Peacock, Kevin Eldon, Dan Atkinson, Ross Noble, Al Murray & Harry Hill.

 The Seven Raymonds (featuring Rich & Stew) in their Edinburgh Debut, KMnO4.

Not much info on this, apart from this brilliant poster.

This is most likely the show Richard Herring keeps going on about where Keith Allen moved some crash mats, nearly injuring Ben Moor.