After years of drifting aimlessly and alone, RICHARD HERRING is now settled down with a wife and a tiny baby. Is he finally Happy Now? Or does responsibility for the lives of others come with its own terrors?  In his twelfth solo stand up show, RICHARD examines whether we can ever hope to be or are meant to be truly content. If we were never unhappy would happiness have any meaning? Why do our brains force us to envision the worst possible outcomes even on a day when everything seems fine? How likely is it that RICHARD’s baby will be skewered by a stalactite of frozen urine falling from a plane and is it really worth him wasting his time thinking about it? Does being happy mean a comedian loses his edge and true belly laughs only come from depression? How much pressure was there on Happy the dwarf to live up to his name? Is there any system that will guarantee us eternal bliss or should we just embrace the fact that life is a vale of tears and our only option is to laugh in its face?

Happy Now? is RICHARD HERRING’S twelfth stand-up tour in twelve years. The show premiered in September 2015 when RICHARD completed the mammoth task of performing each of his previous eleven consecutive stand-up shows over eleven evenings, before debuting Happy Now? on the final night.

RICHARD will resume his Happy Now? UK tour on Wednesday 3^rd February and from Thursday 11^th February he will perform at London’s Leicester Square Theatre over three consecutive nights. The tour will conclude with two performances at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre on 3^rd and 4^th June.

 Herring is a superior comedian … hilarious The Guardian

Stimulating and Exhilarating… Utterly Hilarious Chortle *****

The best comedian of his generation GQ

 richardherring.com / @herring1967

For more information and press tickets, please contact: Lottie Robertshaw – lottier@avalonuk.com / 0207 598 7222

NOTES TO EDITORS

Richard Herring has enjoyed phenomenal success as a writer and performer and is an innovator in the world of podcasts. As well as touring Happy Now? in 2016, the show will also be released on DVD.

Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast sees him interview top comedians in front of a live audience and is then released online both as videos and podcasts for free. Previous guests include Stephen Fry, Simon Pegg, Armando Ianucci, Russell Brand, Stephen Merchant, Steve Coogan, Tim Minchin, David Mitchell and Stewart Lee. The show regularly has up to 200,000 listeners per episode, won three Chortle Internet Comedy Awards and is the only non-BBC show to ever win a Sony Best Comedy Award. Richard’s audio podcast and sketch show As It Occurs To Me won a Chortle Award and was Sony-nominated. Richard Herring’s Meaning of Lifewas an independently produced web series performed in front of a live audience and broadcast via the internet for free.

He writes a weekly column for the Metro newspaper and has a script in development with Channel 4.

Richard’s has appeared as a guest on shows including Alan Davies’ As Yet Untitled (Dave), Pointless – Celebrities (BBC One), Argumental (Dave), Set List(Sky Atlantic), Have I Got News For You (BBC One) and Never Mind the Buzzcocks (BBC2). He also wrote and performed two series of Richard Herring’s Objective for BBC Radio 4.

Richard has written and appeared in a number of critically acclaimed plays that have been performed at the Edinburgh Festival, includingRasputin, Punk’s Not Dead, Excavating Rita and It’s Not the End of the World. His one-man Edinburgh shows include the critically-acclaimed What is Love Anyway?, We’re All Going to Die, Christ on a Bike and Hitler Moustache. Richard’s blog Warming Up has gained a cult following since he started it in November 2002 and he has written an entry for every single day since it began, making it what is believed to be the second longest consecutive daily blog in the world.

As one half of the comedy duo Lee & Herring, Richard Herring wrote and performed in shows such as Lionel Nimrod’s Inexplicable World (BBC Radio 4), Fist of Fun (BBC Radio 1/BBC Two) and This Morning with Richard Not Judy (BBC Two). Richard bought the rights to bring out both series of Fist of Fun on DVD with Stewart Lee via independent Welsh company www.gofasterstripe.com.

With Al Murray, Richard devised and wrote 37 episodes of the sitcom Time Gentlemen Please (Sky One/Paramount) for Al’s alter ego The Pub Landlord. Richard also wrote and starred in the comedy drama You Can Choose Your Friends (ITV1).

 FULL LIST OF DATES