DID YOU KNOW? Paul Merton

Paul, 61, is back as a team captain for a 56th series of Have I Got News For You (9pm, BBC1). Here are some things you might not know about the comedian...

He was born Paul James Martin on July 9, 1957 in southwest London. He renamed himself Merton – after the district of London where he grew up – when, having applied to join Equity, he found the name Paul Martin had been taken.

His father was a Tube driver and an amateur football player, and when he died in 2013, Paul inherited his medals, which remain his most treasured possessions.

After leaving school with two A levels, Paul worked as a clerical officer at the Tooting employment office for three years, quitting in February 1980 to pursue a career in comedy.

Ann Widdecombe remains his least favourite host on Have I Got

News For You; she took the hot seat in 2007. ‘She turned to me at one point and said, “Come on, be amusing; that’s what you’re paid for.”’ That obviously didn’t go down well. In a 2007 public poll, he was voted one of Britain’s ten greatest wits of all time, alongside the likes of Oscar Wilde, Spike Milligan,

Noel Coward and Winston Churchill.

Paul has been married three times.

His first wife was the comedian and actor Caroline Quentin, whom he wed in 1990 and divorced in 1998; he officially married his second wife, the producer and writer Sarah Parkinson, three months before her death from breast cancer in 2003.

His third wife is fellow improviser Suki Webster, whom he married in 2009.