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Richard Herring at the Komedia

By Michael Hootman
Mar 25, 2010 - 12:30:12 AM
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Richard Herring's latest show, Hitler's Moustache, aims to reclaim the eponymous rectangle of facial hair for comedy. Rather tainted by its association with Fascism and genocide, Herring wants to take it back to its comedic roots when it was sported by two giants of early cinema, Oliver Hardy and Charlie Chaplin.

More than willing to put his money where his mouth - or at least upper lip - is, Herring grew a genuine Hitler tache which he wore around West London for a few months and still wears today. Which either shows his dedication to his art or, as he fears, a " big commitment to make quite a glib point".

But the show is anything but glib. Apart from being very, very funny - it's a political show which hasn't  even the slightest trace of lecturing. It made be feel slightly shamefaced at having not voted at the last European elections, but then made me feel good with a Baby Maddie joke. It also explains how racists are the true utopians, seeing the world as divided into only four groups - White, Black, Chinese, Asian - where most of the world sees 195 separate nationalities. Herring thus proves that in a way racists see humanity as all the same fifty times better than non-racists.

Along the way we learn that it's acceptable to mock Germans as they're not actually a race - though they wanted to be. And that it's OK to refer to BNP leader Nick Griffin as a " melty face c**t", or maybe that makes us as bad as him, I forget which. But the point is Hitler's Moustache is an intelligent, astute show which, if enough people see it, might even harm the BNP's success at the next election. As Herring points out, in the '30s people from all over the world went over to Spain to fight the fascists in the civil war. Now we won't even venture to the local primary school to put a cross against the name of someone - anyone - who isn't a Nazi. If this shames enough people, like myself, into voting then this might be the one truly indispensable comedy show you'll see this year. With cock jokes.


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