| Talking Cock...Richard Herring bares all! | |
|  | | Richard Herring walkin' n talking... |
| | We grabbed a quickie with Richard to get the low-down on the low-down! Frank, funny, fast and furious, Richard delivers the goods in one of the funniest books of '03! Read it 'n weep... |
| | | Who is the book for?
 I think it's pretty much for everyone. I was very conscious after seeing the Vagina Monologues to write a show and now a book that was accessible to everyone because as a man I felt...although I enjoyed the Vagina Monologues, I felt a bit excluded and attacked in some places [lot's of nervous laughter here] and I kind of thought that I wanted to do something that celebrated men and the good things about men - which doesn't happen very often but also tried to explain them a bit...I think it's for anyone who [breaks up into lots of laughter here!] has any interest in either men or penises which is pretty much everyone (may be not lesbian nuns...I don't think it's aimed at them...everyone else though!)
Do you think there's a discrepancy thing where the Vagina Monologues are lauded as quite serious and highbrow and The Talking Cock has got a toilet-humour tag?
Well, obviously I'm a comedian so I wanted to write something that was funny. In places, I do think the Vagina Monologues can be a bit worthy and a bit unrepresentative of real life...men wouldn't take a serious book about this subject...I'm giving out the information and also making a joke which means that men can laugh and at the same time go 'oh, thank God it isn't just me that's got that problem'. There was a lot of serious points made in the book and as a comedian, I don't like it when people think that just because you're being funny that that somehow undermines your point. I just wanted to say whatever within certain boundaries, but they're very broad boundaries - ie. whatever you want to do with your genitals is up to you really!
Do you think that men will buy the book?
I think they will because I think that there's enough funny stuff in there! What's slightly weird about it is that it's a mixture between one of those comedy books that you'd buy for your brother for Christmas and quite a thoughtful, properly researched history and look at the subject. That's what I picked up from the questionnaire...I think that men have to put up this facade to appear in a certain way and actually they're very interested in all of this sort of stuff and actually, once on the internet where it's all anonymous, they all talk very openly about their sex lives and how they feel, but obviously they find that more difficult to do in real life.
So, how did you actually carry out your research?
I did most of it on the internet. I was going to do more interviewing people face to face but only did a little bit of that...and obviously I went to Iceland to see the penis museum [!] but mainly it was just the questionnaire - I got so much good stuff.
Great, so you didn't have to look down too many trousers then?
I didn't but when we were looking for pictures for the book I did have to look through loads of books and I did get to see quite a lot of quite unusual and some quite unpleasant pictures which [laughter] I'd be quite happy never to see again...as I say in the book, it wasn't writing about what I know, it wasn't what I was particularly interested in before I started this project...I had only really seen my own previously and hopefully it will go back to just being my own that I get to see after this is all over!
So you're like a willy expert now! You could do a thesis on it!
[Lots of laughter] I could! I now keep getting asked to do little things on the tv, but I don't know if I want to turn into being a 'sexpert' ...[thinks] mind you, I'd quite like to put 'sexpert' on my business card - 'comedian, writer and sexpert'...it'd be great for giving to girls and saying 'yeah, look, I'm a sexpert...wanna come back to mine...?'
So, at the end of the day then, is size a real issue?
Yeah, I think that's it! For 95% of cases, penis envy's about men envying men rather than anything that the majority of women think (obviously some women it matters to!) I guess in the same way that it matters to some men whether a girl's got massive baps or not...but I think the majority of women don't mind and yet most men actually think they're small...it's very much like the female thing, the body image thing - the size of their butts or whatever...so hopefully, if men read the book they might feel a bit better about themselves.
Heterosexual men rarely see any other erect penis other than their own possibly or in porn films...but men in porn films arn't very average [lots of laughter] from what I could tell - so they shouldn't really compare themselves to that! But I do think men can be intimidated by the size of other men...but you see the weird thing is that you view other's from the side, whereas you only really view your own from above and everyone else's from the side, so there's a perspective thing going on as well...
Finally, on a scale of 1-10, how pleased are you that your mother called you 'Richard'? [More guffaws]...well, I'm not particularly pleased...but it does work for the book...although there's a book out called 'The Penis Book' written by someone called Doctor Dick Richards...so, he beats me on that one! Mind you 'Herring' is one of the euphemisms used by some referencing their penises...so I'm in a bit of trouble over that one!
...and with that, he was orf... |
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