Laughter gets me through dark times

Comedian Paul Merton tells Hannah Stephenson how comedy has helped his mental health over the years

though good times and bad times, laughter is a release.

“When you are laughing hysterically, you’re not thinking about the mortgage, the children’s education, the state of the country or how Arsenal are doing.”

It has helped Merton through his own crises, including a short stay in the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital, where he checked himself in in 1990.

In his autobiography Only When I Laugh, he described experiencing a heightened state of excitement but when he started rambling and crying, telling a friend he thought he was Jesus, it was time to seek help.

While some speculated he was suffering from depression, Paul has said his manic behaviour was down to anti-malaria tablets he’d been taking for a holiday in Kenya. He may seem dour and straightfaced when satirising politicians and celebrities on long-running panel show Have I Got News For You but Paul is surprisingly cheerful in conversation.

His deadpan – and at times surreal – comedy has endeared him to millions over the years and has been his own therapy in times of trouble, he admitted.

Now Paul is releasing his new book Funny Ha Ha, a collection of 80 funny stories by the great and the good, from Anton Chekhov and PG Wodehouse to Nora

Ephron and Victoria Wood. It is dedicated to his third wife, fellow comedian Suki Webster, who he married in 2009. They have been doing improvisational comedy since the late 90s, touring as part of Paul Merton’s Impro Chums.

He said: “The fact we do it together is great. We both know what the gig was like and I’m working with somebody I love.”

The shy son of a London train driver, Merton remembers his first comedy gig, in April 1982 at The Comedy Store in London.

Paul said: “I’d written a monologue based on a police case in Wales in the late 70s called Operation Julie where the police had raided this factory that was making the drug LSD. There was LSD dust in the air which they sort of ingested and they didn’t know what was happening to them.

“I remember seeing an interview with a policeman in a pub talking about his hallucinations in a very dry policeman-like way.

“I saw the possibility of a sketch of a policeman in court relating a hallucinogenic experience in that dry manner.

“The audience loved it and there were cries of, ‘More’. I walked home in a haze of happiness.

“There were tougher gigs after that but it kept me going for the next 18 months.”

Some 37 years on. Paul is still making us laugh and keeping himself healthy.