Lee and Herring

Lee and Herring
Medium	Television, Radio, Stage
Nationality	English
Years active	1992–2000
Genres	Sketch comedy
Subject(s)	British culture
Notable works and roles	Fist of Fun This Morning with Richard Not Judy
Members	Richard Herring Stewart Lee

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

As with many double acts, Lee and Herring performed as contrasting personalities: one mature and straight-laced (Lee) and the other puerile and cheeky (Herring). As with several other double acts, Lee and Herring had a certain irony to their style and constantly checked themselves and made reference to this. The characters of Lee and Herring were parodies and exaggerations of their real life selves.

In 2011, Frank Skinner cited Lee & Herring as one of his favourite comedy double acts, alongside Laurel and Hardy, The Two Ronnies and Reeves and Mortimer.

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. Lee once remarked that one of the reasons they decided to work as a double act was that they found the resemblance of the title "Lee and Herring" to Worcestershire sauce brand Lea & Perrins humorous.

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). However, a management conflict meant that the duo were not involved in the television version, The Day Today, and that their material was edited out of the official BBC audio releases of On The Hour.

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