Podcast pioneer is to wind down his long-running Leicester Square Theatre Podcast interviews.
He broke the news in his latest column after plugging his three upcoming shows with guests including, on 28th September, James Acaster and Isy Suttie.
Herring continued: "You might also want to come because I am pretty certain that these will be the last three live RHLSTP shows I do. At the very least I am going to take a break from it, but I think it’s probably time to move on to do something else. My plan is to continue doing Book Club episodes and releasing old RHLSTPs each week, but all the signs seem to point towards it being time to bring the main show to an end.
Firstly I’ve done a lot of them: we’re closing in on 1000 eps if you include book clubs and Edinburgh shows. Secondly there is so much competition now, (mostly shows hosted by huge household names), which also means that it’s much harder to attract guests, listeners and audience members. Thirdly and linked to that it’s a lot of work for my team of Evanses and Ben Walker and George the incompetent sound man and me and we’re no longer really earning enough from ads to pay everyone properly. Much as I like working for free (as I did for most of the first ten years of podcasting and continue to do with my other stupid podcast projects) I do have to feed my family and feel that maybe my time might be better spent on other projects. Even though those projects may turn out to be just daily unpaid conversations with my ventriloquist dummy.
I know how much the podcasts have meant to some of you and I am still very proud of them and enjoy doing them (though booking them is a hassle I will be glad to be rid of), but I also think I should get out before the quality starts to dip (from an admittedly low start) or I become resentful of doing it.
It’s possible I will miss it and that all I actually need is a break and it might come back, but my feeling is that that won’t happen (unless an eccentric millionaire wants to inject a huge amount of cash into the project). It’s not going away straight away as with Edinburgh shows, the London shows and studio records we already have enough to get us to the end of January 2027, which will mean the show lasted for almost 15 years (well over, if you include the original RHEFP series). The end of January 2027 also marks 19 years since the first Collings and Herrin show where all this began.
Though the Book Clubs are a little bit less knockabout, I love doing them and it’s much easier to book. The downside of the live podcast is that guests have to be available at very specific times, when we have the theatre slot. With book clubs I can do them pretty much whenever the guest is available. As long as we don’t haemorrhage money with it, my interviews will continue.
I don’t know who will be the final guest (I know I promised it to Tim Minchin, but I doubt he’ll be around in November). If anyone knows Paul McCartney can you ask him if he’s around on November 16th? But if you want to express appreciation for the show and help it go out with a bang then it’d be lovely to see you at one (or all) of these last three shows. Tickets here."
