Merton & Co keep delivering laughs in 56th series of quiz
Have I Got News For You
(BBC Two, tonight 9pm)
TAKE great guests, witty team captains and a cynical host, add a dose of acerbic comedy, and what do you get?
That’s right, Have I Got News For You, which is back for its 56th series – yes, really, its 56th series – this week.
Little has changed since the show began over on BBC Two back in 1990 – apart from the absence of Angus Deayton, right, as host. He left in 2002 to be replaced by a variety of guest presenters. However, the general format and team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton remain.
Merton did, of course, disappear himself for a season in 1996 after claiming he was “very tired” of the show. However, he made a triumphant return and has stuck around ever since.
Now he’s one of the UK’s most sought-after comedians – which isn’t bad going for a bloke who started out as an admin clerk at Tooting Employment Office, a job he admits wasn’t really for him. So he began writing his own material and performing stand-up routines at London’s Comedy Store.
“It got to a point when I knew I had to give it a real shot,” he says. “I gave myself five years to succeed. I didn’t want to be one of these people who at the age of 60 says, ‘I could have done it once, but I never really tried’. I thought, ‘I don’t really know if I’m going to be any good at it or not, but at least I’ll spend a few years having a go. And if I don’t get anywhere, then I’ll just stop’.” That was in 1982.
Merton also had a spell on improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? It may have given him an early insight into working on TV, but he often found appearing alongside highbrow comic John Sessions rather baffling.
“I never knew what he was on about,” admits Merton. “He would do something in the style of William Faulkner. So I’d do something deliberately prosaic in the style of the Automobile Association manual. I just thought, ‘well nobody knows who William Faulkner is. Or if they do, they’re not laughing very loudly’.”
Eventually, after plenty of hard work, Merton became a household name but the road to stardom hasn’t always been smooth. Around eight years into his comedy career, his tendency to be a workaholic got too much for him.
“I went into the Maudsley mental hospital I was going a bit manic,” he reveals. “What I learned from that is that it’s not a good idea to try and do three different things at once. I now have a rule that I only do one thing at a time, I don’t perform and try and cram in the writing as well.”
He claims to be happy – and that his downbeat TV appearances are largely a front.
“I realised that people thought I was a lot more funny when I seemed to be as miserable as sin,” he says.
Having that deadpan alter-ego has also helped Merton remain a private person, an enigma to those watching at home.
“There are still vestiges of shyness within me,” he says. “I’m more outgoing among people I know, but generally speaking I’m quite happy to drift around and not be noticed most of the time.”