Donkey, Xote!

In number 121, our last podcast before Edinburgh* – so a week off next week before the ten-a-fortnight onslaught, kids! – we catch up with the Russian parasailing donkey; come up with a porn name for Toy Story 3; create a Utopian vision of how the remake of The A-Team might unite father and son, or father and bag of sperm; investigate the embalming properties of Vocalzone pastilles; wonder what would happen if Russell Brand became locked to Richard’s girlfriend in death and Richard got off with Katy Perry at their joint funeral; and keep Richard’s clinical exhaustion at bay by arguing about whether or not he should wait until he’s Scotty off of Star Trek‘s age before having a Paul Carr-style son and then blasting his remains off into infinity and beyond. [see previous week’s podcast pic for Paul Carr.]

*May not be up yet, but it’s in the right hands, so will be soon

Sic

Back! Back! Back! Yes! It’s the Collings and Herrin Reunion Podcast, number 120, featuring Andrew Collins and Richard Herring [sic] in the same room, sharing air and surfaces in complete viral safety. Richard feels like a new man since his purge and is sanguine and circumspect about the fact that he is not the 173rd best comedian ever to go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival according to an Australian lager that has only just started sponsoring it. He still hates squirrels, though, and wild dogs, while Andrew thinks Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail should be drowned in a bucket. Because we have one or two names to read out, we deliberately add an extra ten minutes of goatish lunacy on the end. That’s because we’re nice, and we care, and you don’t deserve us. Enjoy the photo taken by Paul Carr almost a year ago in which he has transplanted his own features with Richard’s without anybody noticing.

Lose weight now, ask me how!

Brilliant response to this week’s Nerd Army task: to represent 2.5kg in pictorial form, as that’s how much weight Richard lost this week by projectile vomiting until he was a dry husk, and then not feeling very hungry for a couple of days. We wouldn’t recommend this supermodel diet, but it worked for him. Go here to see the full gallery so far. It does the Army great credit. You can listen to the show for the next six days here, and the podcast is here – or will be on Monday. We had a lot of fun, and our new producer Alicia only panicked once, when it seemed as if Richard was suggesting he wanted to take part in a threesome with Samantha Mumba and Matt from Busted, except Matt from Busted when he was under 16, which he actually wasn’t – he stated 21 very clearly. I think Alicia is somebody we can work with! Even though she thought it would be a funny joke to put a jingle in at the top of the show which said we were Adam and Joe. She claims to know nothing about it, but we know psychological warfare when we see it.

Infect me with your love

A unique podcasting experiment! Because Andrew was too scared to go to Richard’s house, which he believes to be rampant with the norovirus on every surface, they decided to record this week’s podcast [which may take a bit longer to upload but be patient with Orange Mark] in quarantined conditions: Richard’s in his fetid attic, Andrew’s in a soundproofed room at the Radio Times office. Neither has listened to the other’s half yet. In Richard’s half he goes into what might be too much detail about a very dirty weekend away with his girlfriend in Suffolk. Those of a sensitive disposition will surely have stopped listening to this podcast by now, but this might test the mettle of a few of you. He may or may not be critical of his former colleague Andrew Collings’ decision to record his half of the podcast in a germ free booth at the BBC. There is only one way to find out. Andrew’s half is mainly about films he has seen, a section during which Richard would normally sleep or check his iPhone anyway, so best left in isolation. This podcast was not done using germ-free Skype, because of the way other podcasts done using Skype have sounded.

Life, the universe and everything

If you wish to send Richard Herring a visual birthday message or picture, use the andrew.6music@bbc.co.uk email address, and add to this currently pretty paltry display of universal birthday love for the 43-year-old-tomorrow. We had a fun show on Saturday, which is already available as a 6 Music podcast here. Good work, Tom/Will. (It is actually Tom, but Richard thinks all young me who work at 6 Music look the same.) In this picture I am giving Richard a present which he was very rude about on air. But he is a very rude man.

Otto the octopus

Yes, in a partial tribute to those running idiots in moustaches, we present Podcast 118 [coming here, soon], which will not help you find a phone number, but will tread a fine line between sincerity and insincerity, artifice and reality, current affairs and endless emails from needy fans, hard news and insubstantial fluff, bromance and bickering, commerce and charity … this just in: “manhunt” man still at large: was once a cute baby, Ashley Cole still by the pool with two ex-public schoolgirls, parents banned from own children’s sports day according to made-up lie, everyone in Britain drunk according to Justin Webb, and Paul the octopus a miracle but inappropriately named. Richard likes Andrew, and Andrew likes Richard. And they’ve been doing this for years, darlin’, and they know what they’re doing. (You’ll have to listen to the bonus minutes to understand that.) Oh, and thank you very much for the partially stamped sushi card, Giles Stafford [pictured].

Inset

6 Music has been saved, and it cannot be a coincidence that it has been saved since they gave Richard and I a regular slot. Meanwhile, the Guardian are directing visitors to their helpful “Who’s Who” of 6 Music presenters, originally created in March when 6 Music was seen to be doomed. I applaud their picture editor’s sense of proportion.

Disrespectful to comedy

In Collings & Herrin Podcast 117 – coming soon: here – recorded in the heat of the middle of the day with salty tidemarks forming everywhere [fortunately not pictured, as BT have decided to turn back time in Richard’s house to the late 90s when the internet took ages for pictures to scroll into view], we dissect the comedy ambitions of Lembit Opik, the new benchmark by which all latecoming stand-up comedians with confidence but no jokes must now be judged; the motives of the Sun‘s front page image of a soldier who’s been shot in the face in Afghanistan – see full video at thesun.co.uk!!!!! – the media’s surprising fascination with an attractive female Russian spy; and the fashion impact of foot gloves. But mainly we reminisce about the good old days when pictures took ages to scroll into view on the internet and wait for a man to finish unloading 1,000,000 Christ On A Bike programmes. We also grudgingly point you at the American t-shirt website Death To Tennis, even though they haven’t sent us any of their t-shirts.