RAINER HERSCH BIO
April 2013
Rainer Hersch is a stand-up comedian, pianist, conductor, writer and broadcaster who has performed on every major comedy stage in Britain and abroad. He has appeared thirteen times at the Edinburgh Festival; had numerous comedy-concert series at the South Bank in London; featured in comedy clubs all across Europe and in TV shows around the world.
A trained pianist and conductor, Rainer started his working life in the touring department of a concert agency, managing some of the great orchestras of the world. At the same time he developed a hobby, which he had begun at university - performing comedy on the London circuit. Short unpaid slots in small clubs led to longer, paid appearances which gradually developed into a parallel career. In time, Rainer realised that this was, in fact, his true vocation and gave up his last straight musical job, Touring Manager of the London
Festival Orchestra, to join the world of professional comedy.
Twenty years later, his unique training has kept him in constant demand – combining laughter with classical music. In addition, he has built up a considerable reputation as a broadcaster, devising and presenting many programmes for Classic FM in the UK and the BBC. His long list of credits includes comedy shows ranging from All Classical Music Explained (BBC
Radio 4) and entertaining documentaries about more serious subjects like his
September 2012 programme on the piano music of John Cage (BBC Radio 3) which has been nominated for a Sony Award. He also writes a regular, funny column for BBC Music Magazine.
Recent highlights in Rainer’s performing career include a sell-out run of
Rainer Hersch’s Victor Borge in the West End plus tours of India and the
United Arab Emirates for the Comedy Store. So far in 2013, has undertaken a 30-date tour across the UK conducting the Johann Strauss Orchestra, conducted two orchestras in Canada and performed a week of stand-up in
Berlin (Rainer is a fluent German speaker). On April 1 st , he continued his charita ble April Fools Day concert series at London’s Royal Festival Hall with symphony orchestra and musical celebrities including the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.
Rainer lives in London with his wife, Connie, and his pet dog, a miniature schnauzer called Ted.
Three other things you didn’t know about Rainer Hersch:
1) As a student, whilst working as doorman to the artists in his university concert series, the celebrated cellist Paul Tortelier once gave Rainer his
Stradivarius cello to hold while he went back on stage to acknowledge the applause (naturally, he whipped off one of the pegs to keep as a souvenir).

2) A fiend with the croquet mallet, Rainer holds the singles 14-point trophy from his local croquet club (frequently reducing old ladies to tears of frustration).
3) In the course of his travels, Rainer has seen three of the four available communist leaders whose bodies were embalmed after their death: Lenin,
Mao and Georgi Dimitrov (Bulgarian leader, now buried). The last one in the set, Ho Chi Minh absolutely must be visited at some point. Why? Rainer is neither a communist nor the slightest bit interested in embalming.
He doesn’t even know how on earth he got into this mummified-leader thing. But he is half German and, deep down, feels that not finishing the series would be somehow inefficient.