Paul Merton

Paul James Martin (born 9 July 1957), known by the stage name Paul Merton, is an English comedian.

Known for his improvisation skill, Merton's humour is rooted in deadpan, surreal and sometimes dark comedy.

He has been ranked by critics, fellow comedians and viewers to be among Britain's greatest comedians.

Paul James Martin was born on 9 July 1957 in Parsons Green, west London, to an English Anglican father, Albert Martin (a train driver on the London Underground), and an Irish Catholic mother, Mary Ann Power (medical nurse).

It was revealed on Who Do You Think You Are? that Merton's maternal grandfather, James Power, was from Passage East in County Waterford and served in the British Army in the First World War but left to join the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence.

As a volunteer in the IRA he served as a 1st lieutenant in the East Waterford Brigade.

Merton lived in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham until 8 years old.

Merton attended St Thomas's School, Fulham and St Teresa's, Morden ("being sent to Coventry at school" ).

He then went to Wimbledon College, a Jesuit-run secondary school that was formerly a grammar school and had just become a comprehensive, in a stream for boys who had failed the 11-plus, and he passed A-levels in English and History.

He made his breakthrough in the late 1980s as a regular performer on the original British version of the comedy improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and has been a team captain on the comedy panel show Have I Got News for You since it began in 1990.

After leaving school, Merton worked at the Tooting employment office as a clerical officer for three years, quitting in February 1980.

Merton auditioned for Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts at 19 years old.

Merton has stated that he was inspired to go into comedy at an early age watching clowns at a circus, remembering, "I don't think I'd seen clowns before. I'd certainly never seen adults behave like this...From that evening, I wanted to be part of the process that was making all those people laugh."

In the late 1980s, Merton appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Big Fun Show.

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.

Merton commented that he made his professional debut, along with writing partner John Irwin, in Swansea in 1982 which led to having an "affection for Wales".

"What we did over the course of two weeks was perform 10 shows and it meant that our first time on stage if we made a mistake on the Monday we wouldn't repeat that mistake the next day."

Merton recalls that on only his second or third night he found the dour role that has informed his comic approach ever since.

He gained his earliest professional credits under his birth name, including an appearance as a yokel in Time, an episode of The Young Ones in 1984.

On joining Equity he found that the name Paul Martin was already taken by a juggler in Leeds, so he renamed himself after Merton, the district of London where he grew up.

After performing on the London Alternative Comedy circuit at places like The Comedy Store and Jongleurs, in 1985 his first foray to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was with the show Have You Been on Telly where he shared the bill with Morris Minor and the Majors and Mark Steel.

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

After long-time Just a Minute panellist Kenneth Williams died in 1988, Merton (a fan of the show) contacted the producer at the suggestion of the host, Nicholas Parsons.

He was invited to participate during the following year and has appeared regularly on the programme ever since.

Merton's breakthrough as a television performer came in 1988 with Channel 4's improvised comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which moved to TV from BBC Radio 4, though he had previously performed on the channel's Saturday Live and compered its series Comedy Wavelength in 1987.

Merton appears as a panellist regularly on Radio 4's Just a Minute, first appearing in 1989, and became the only remaining regular panellist in 2009 following the death of Clement Freud.

He has also appeared as one of the Comedy Store's Comedy Store Players.

Have I Got News for You began in 1990, and two series of his own sketch show, Paul Merton: The Series, followed soon after.

Besides his work on Just a Minute, Merton was a semi-regular guest on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue from 1991 to 1998.

Between 1993 and 1995, Merton was among the regular cast members on the Radio 4 improvisational comedy series The Masterson Inheritance.

He remained on Whose Line until 1993.

In 1995 he presented a documentary series celebrating the history of the London Palladium, entitled Paul Merton's Palladium Story.

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....

He was also the host of Room 101 from 1999 to 2007, replacing original host Nick Hancock.

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.

Merton has performed in Paul Merton's Impro Chums at Pleasance as part of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival every year from 2008.

Merton was due to make his West End debut in the 2021 revival of Hairspray at the London Coliseum.

However, after several delays to the show it was confirmed that Merton would not be joining the company.

In 2009, Merton started a Radio 4 series in which he reads Spike Milligan's war memoirs in an audio-book fashion.

In 2016 Merton overtook Williams to become the second most regular panellist, surpassed only by Clement Freud.