Everything about Paul Merton totally explained
Paul James Martin (born
9 July 1957), better known by the
stage name Paul Merton, is an
English actor,
comedian and
writer. He is best known as a panellist on the
BBC television show
Have I Got News for You and
Radio 4's
Just a Minute, as well as
Channel 4's
Whose Line Is It Anyway? in the first five series, and as the host of the BBC TV show
Room 101 and the
ITV improvisation show,
Thank God You're Here.
His style is characterised by describing extremely improbable scenarios with a straight, almost serious, face. He rapidly grabs hold of any chance to expand on a subject and stretch its credibility to snapping point. In 2003, he was listed in
The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy. In
The Comedian's Comedian, a 2005 Channel 4 poll of fellow comedians, he was voted the 20th funniest comedian in the universe. A 2007 poll saw him voted alongside the likes of
Oscar Wilde,
Spike Milligan,
Noël Coward and
Winston Churchill as one of the ten greatest wits ever.
Personal life
Merton was born on
9 July 1957 in
Parsons Green,
London to an English father (a
train driver on the
London Underground). When his mother returned to work as a nurse, Merton and his younger sister were looked after by their grandfather, who lived with them in their
council flat.
He failed his
eleven plus, and famously received an unclassified grade for metalwork at
CSE before moving on to
Wimbledon College, a
Jesuit-run secondary school that had just become a
comprehensive. His experience of victimisation there as a working-class boy became a frequent subject of his comedy. After leaving school, Merton worked at the
Tooting Employment Office for seven years.
Merton married the actress
Caroline Quentin in 1990, but they divorced in 1998. Merton subsequently had a relationship with comedian
Sarah Parkinson; they were married unofficially in a service in The Maldives in
2000, they were officially married three months before her death from
breast cancer on
23 September 2003.
Shortly before becoming a household name on
Have I Got News for You, Merton had suffered a
mental breakdown and booked himself into the
Maudsley psychiatric hospital for six weeks, about which he's since talked frankly, in an interview with
The Guardian he was reported to have been "hallucinating conversations with friends, and became convinced he was a target for the Freemasons".
Career
Merton often claims that he was inspired to go into comedy at a young age watching clowns at a circus, remembering, "I had no idea that adults could behave like that." He gained his earliest professional credits under his birth name, including an appearance as a
yokel in an episode of
The Young Ones. On joining
Equity he found that the name Paul Martin was already taken, so he renamed himself after
Merton, the district of London where he grew up.
Stage
Though he'd harboured serious ambitions of becoming a performing comedian since his school days, it wasn't until April 1982, at the
Comedy Store in
Soho, that his dream was realised. He recalls that on only his second or third night he found the dour role that has informed his comic approach ever since.
He has been a member of the London improv group
The Comedy Store Players since 1985, and still regularly performs with them.
One of these early routines at the Comedy Store involved the report of a policeman who had been given a
hallucinogenic drug. This routine was very popular and went on to be included in his television series. Merton recalls, "I walked all the way home to my bedsit in
Streatham. I was on a cloud. And that one night got me through every single bad gig after that — and there were a lot of them. I was so lucky to get that encouragement early on. It kept me going over the next eighteen months of just dying the whole time."
In 1986, while performing in the
Edinburgh Fringe, he was mugged while helping a friend put up posters. He was kicked in the head and had to go to
hospital. A year later, Merton returned to
Edinburgh. His one-man show was receiving very good reviews. However, while playing football with fellow comedians, he broke his leg, and whilst in hospital, he suffered a
pulmonary embolism and contracted
hepatitis A. He lost the £3,000 he'd paid in advance for the theatre and would have been in worse trouble had the Comedy Store not held a benefit for him. "I was getting the reviews of my life — they were saying 'Go and see this man!'", he said. "And I was in a hospital bed. They should have said 'Go see this man and take a bunch of grapes with you'."
In 1999, Merton undertook a stand-up tour entitled "and this is me PAUL MERTON". "I did this show on tour last
autumn," he explained to one of his audiences. "I did sixty-eight dates. I did shows all over the place:
Liverpool,
Dublin,
Stoke. Sixty-eight dates, two hours per night. Two hours, and not one laugh."
Merton, speaking to
Melvyn Bragg at the former's home, explained: "I hadn't done stand-up comedy for about ten years, and it was like I'd never done it. People had no idea I'd been a stand-up comedian; they thought I was born to sit behind a desk and make quips about the week's news."
Television
His breakthrough as a television performer came as a result of the improvised comedy show
Whose Line Is It Anyway? from 1988 onwards, which moved to TV from
BBC Radio 4, although he'd previously appeared on
Saturday Live, performing stand-up comedy. He remained on
Whose Line until 1993.
Have I Got News for You started in 1990, and two series of his own
sketch show,, followed soon after. In 1996, Merton performed updated versions of fifteen of
Ray Galton and
Alan Simpson's old scripts for an ITV series,
Paul Merton in Galton & Simpson's.... Six of these scripts were previously performed by
Tony Hancock. These were very badly received by both critics and public, and although a selection of episodes were initially released on
VHS, it wasn't until June 2007 that the complete series was released on
DVD.
Also in 1996, Merton took a break from
Have I Got News for You during its eleventh series, making only one appearance as a guest on fellow captain
Ian Hislop's team. Merton later explained that at the time he was "very tired" of the show and that he thought it had become "stuck in a rut". Nevertheless, he added that he felt his absence gave the programme the "shot in the arm" it needed and that it had been "better ever since". In 2002, following allegations in the UK tabloids linking the show's chairman,
Angus Deayton, with prostitutes and drug use, the host was asked to resign from the show. Merton hosted the first episode after Deayton's departure and was described as "merciless" in his treatment of his former co-star.
In 1999 Merton replaced
Nick Hancock as host of
Room 101, a chat show in which guests are offered the chance to discuss their pet hates and consign them to the oblivion of
Room 101. He hosted 64 editions. In 2007, his final guest was Ian Hislop (himself becoming the first interviewee to appear twice, having also been on an edition with Hancock). Hislop's selections purposely included items that Merton was known to like, such as
The Beatles and the films of
Charlie Chaplin.
In 1999, Merton starred alongside
Ronnie Corbett as one of the ugly sisters in
ITV's Christmas
pantomime. His other co-stars were
Samantha Janus,
Ben Miller,
Harry Hill,
Frank Skinner and
Alexander Armstrong.
He was rumoured to be a possible new host of
Countdown to replace both
Richard Whiteley and his successor,
Des Lynam, but decided not to pursue this.
Merton is a keen student of comedy, and particularly the early film comedians. In 2006,
BBC Four broadcast
Paul Merton's Silent Clowns: a four-part documentary series on the silent comedy craft of
Buster Keaton,
Charlie Chaplin,
Laurel and Hardy and
Harold Lloyd. Merton examined their respective careers, interspersed with moments from a live show in which he presented clips of their work. Among the audience were many children, who were seeing the performers for the first time. Merton took a stage version of this show to the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in late 2007 took the show on a UK tour. A tie-in book was written by Merton and published by RH Books in late 2007.
The Independent described it as "clearly a labour of love" but criticised the exhaustive and overly-thorough plot synopses of the films discussed.
Also in 2007 he presented a four-part travel documentary,
Paul Merton in China, which was broadcast on
Five from
21 May 2007. He has finished filming a new travel series about
India.
Merton hosts the British version of
Thank God You're Here, which premiered on
ITV in January 2008.
Radio
In the late 1980s Merton appeared on BBC Radio 4's
The Big Fun Show. Between 1993 and 1995, Merton was amongst the regular cast members on the Radio 4 improvisational comedy series
The Masterson Inheritance. Besides his regular appearances on
Just a Minute, he's also joined the
I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue team for the occasional programme. In 2000 he presented
Two Priests and a Nun Go into a Pub in which he interviewed British and Irish comedians who had (like Merton himself) been brought up as members of the
Roman Catholic Church. In 2009, Merton will start a Radio 4 series in which he reads
Spike Milligan's war memoirs in an audio-book fashion.
Awards
After seven nominations for a
BAFTA award for Best Entertainment Performance, Merton finally won the award in April 2003, defeating fellow
Have I Got News for You star
Angus Deayton, who had been dismissed from the show the previous October. He was nominated for the 2007
BAFTA award for his travel documentary
Paul Merton in China. In 2008, Merton presented
Bruce Forsyth with a BAFTA Fellowship: Forsyth had given Merton his award in 2003.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Paul Merton'.
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