Paul Merton

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Paul Merton

Born
July 9, 1957 (age 49)
Parsons Green, London
Occupation
Actor, writer, comedian
Career milestones
Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988–98)
Have I Got News For You (1990–1995; 1996–present)
Paul Merton: The Series (1991–1993)
Room 101 (1999–present)
Website
The unofficial Paul Merton website

Paul Merton (born Paul Martin 9 July 1957[1]) is an English actor, deadpan comedian and writer, who is best known as a panellist on the BBC TV 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 four series, and as the present host of Room 101.

His style is characterised by describing extremely improbable scenarios with a straight — even mournful-looking — face. He rapidly grabs hold of any chance to expand on a subject and stretch its credibility to snapping point. While this technique has arguably worked well for Merton in improv when played off against more strait-laced guests on panel shows, it has been perhaps less successful when Merton uses this form of high-fantasy in a scripted form, as was the case with his sketch show, Paul Merton: The Series.

In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.[2] In The Comedian's Comedian, a 2005 Channel 4 poll of fellow comedians, he was voted the 20th funniest comedian in the universe.

Contents

[edit] Personal life

Merton was born in Parsons Green, London to an English father (a train driver on the London Underground) and a mother of Irish Catholic extraction. When his mother returned to work as a nurse, Paul 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 just as it became comprehensive. His experience of victimisation there as a working-class boy became a frequent subject of his comedy. After leaving Catholic school, Merton worked at the Tooting Employment Office for ten years.

Merton married the actress Caroline Quentin in 1990, but they divorced in 1998. Merton subsequently had a relationship with comedian Sarah Parkinson; they married shortly before her death from breast cancer on September 23, 2003.

[edit] Career

Paul Merton on Have I Got News For You
Enlarge
Paul Merton on Have I Got News For You

He 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.

Though he had harboured serious ambitions of becoming a performing comedian since his school days, it was not 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 was to inform his comic approach ever since.

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 had paid up front 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'."

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. Have I Got News for You (HIGNFY) started in 1990, and two series of his own sketch show, Paul Merton: The Series, followed soon after. Between 1993 and 1995 he was amongst the regular cast members on the Radio 4 improvisational comedy series The Masterson Inheritance. In 1996, Merton performed updated versions of fifteen of Ray Galton & 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.

Since 1999 he has been the 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. Merton will leave the show after the next series is broadcast in 2007. He will have hosted 64 editions. His final guest will be Ian Hislop.[3]

Besides his regular radio appearances on Just a Minute, he has also joined the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue team for the occasional programme.

Shortly before becoming a household name on HIGNFY, Merton had suffered a mental breakdown and booked himself into the Maudsley psychiatric hospital for six weeks, about which he has since talked frankly. He had begun to hallucinate conversations with friends.

He has been a member of the London improv group The Comedy Store Players since 1985, and still regularly performs with them.

After seven nominations for a BAFTA award for Best Entertainment Performance, Merton finally won the award in April 2003, defeating fellow HIGNFY star Angus Deayton, who had been fired from the show the previous October.

He was linked with taking over as host on Countdown, but decided not to pursue this.

In 2006, BBC Four broadcast Paul Merton's Silent Clowns: a four-part documentary series that focused 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 these iconic performers for the first time. Merton took a stage version of this show to the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

[edit] Fashion

As well as his sense of humour, Merton is recognised for his sometimes bizarre dress sense on HIGNFY, often used for comedic effect, especially "in-jokes". While the other contestants usually wear suits, Merton often does not follow this trend. He has appeared wearing:

  • A replica of the suit worn by Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner
  • A muppet-like sweater
  • A blue cricket jersey
  • A Garrick Club tie (leading to a complaint from the establishment, which stated that the comedian had no right to wear it as he was not a member and — should he apply — would be rejected anyway)
  • A metal tie
  • A t-shirt bearing the slogan "Turn Over At 11" (in reference to his Channel 4 sketch show, Paul Merton: The Series, which was on that night at 11pm). He later did a similar thing by wearing a shirt advertising his BBC Four series, Paul Merton's Silent Clowns.
  • Another stating "I DRINK COOPER'S CREOSOTE" (a fictional brand that Merton claimed Ian Hislop advertised)
  • A Sooty hat, to which he referred as his "catch hat"
  • Perhaps most famously, a t-shirt featuring the front page of News of the World, displaying the headline "TV Deayton's Drugs Romp With Vice Girl". This was a successful attempt to embarrass the presenter after stories of his alleged infidelities were published in the paper. Deayton lost his job as host of HIGNFY shortly thereafter.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Many sources give a birthdate of January 17, 1957. The date given above is in Who's Who and Internet Movie Database.
  2. ^ The A-Z of laughter. Guardian Unlimited. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2006-09-10.
  3. ^ "No Room for Merton", Chortle, 09/12/2006. Retrieved on 2006-12-09.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:


Have I Got News for You
Ian Hislop | Angus Deayton | Paul Merton
The Guest Presenters on HIGNFY
HIGNFY Episodes | HIGNFY Guest Publications | The London Studios
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