How did Richard Herring become the comedy podcast king?

What does it mean to be a successful comic? Richard Herring isn’t sure. He’s been a ‘professional funnyman’ for nearly 30 years, yet — as he’s the first to admit — he’s largely unknown beyond the circuit. Even then he has doubts. ‘I’m never in those top-100 stand-up lists,’ he says, when we meet in Soho ahead of his new tour. He admits his old shows have largely been forgotten and he hasn’t been to an awards ceremony for decades. As promo strategies go, it’s a curious one. But then Herring is an odd one. In the late 1990s, he was part of a new wave of Oxbridge-educated fame-hungry young comics who exploded on to television. But while his contemporaries — Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris — thrived in the limelight, Herring made a quick splash before disappearing from the schedules almost entirely. He hasn’t made a BBC TV show this millennium.