Actors - Lee and Herring

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	Actors - Lee and Herring

Lee and Herring are a British standup comedy double act consisting of the comedians, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. They are probably most famous for their work on television, most notably Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy but have been working together on stage and on radio since the 1980s.

As with many double acts, Lee and Herring perform as contrasting personalities: one intellectual and rational (Lee) and the other daft and charming (Herring). Unlike many other double acts, however, Lee and Herring have a certain irony to their style and constantly check themselves and make reference to this. The characters of Lee and Herring are parodies and exaggerations of their real world selves.

Lee and Herring first met at a party while they were studying at Oxford University. Lee had been performing comedy on the circuit for a short while and had heard that Herring had begun doing similar so he introduced himself.

At Oxford, Lee and Herring performed in a regular comedy revue called The Seven Raymonds, which also included the material and performance of Emma Kennedy, Michael Cosgrave and Tim Richardson.

Together they wrote material for Chris Morris' On The Hour (1991), although they did not write for the televsion version, The Day Today. In 1992 and 1993, they wrote and performed Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World for BBC Radio 4. For BBC Radio 1, they wrote and performed one series of Fist of Fun (1993), which was later remade for television and would pave the way for their mainstream fame.

After the radio version of Fist of Fun, they presented another Radio 1 show running for 3 series, simply entitled Lee and Herring (but often referred to as Lee & Herring's Radio One Music Show) which featured a mixtures of records chosen by the duo themselves, and their usual sketches and chat.

Their final major work as a double-act was This Morning With Richard Not Judy (TMWRNJ), which aired on Sunday afternoons on BBC Two for series in 1998 and 1999, and was famous for being strikingly risky and adventurous.

Lee and Herring went their separate ways at the end of the 1990s and have both enjoyed major fringe and mainstream successes. Stewart Lee co-created Jerry Springer - The Opera, directed Attention Scum! for Simon Munnery and wrote a novel called The Perfect Fool. Richard Herring has written, performed and toured with a number of successful comedy shows including Christ on a Bike, Talking Cock and Someone Likes Yoghurt. He also wrote and co-created the sitcom, Time Gentlemen Please and is the script editor for series 3 of Little Britain. Most recently, Herring hosted the 2005 celebrity chat show Heads Up with Richard Herring for pokerzone. Lee and Herring both still work in radio and media.

Occasionally, Lee and Herring regroup for one-off occasions. Recent collaborations included an interview together for The Guardian; a standup double bill at The Amused Moose comedy club in London and a 2005 review of each other's work for the arts supplement of The Sunday Times.

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