PAUL MERTON | INTERVIEW
Currently touring his improvisation show Impro Chums, Have I Got News For You star and seasoned comedian Paul Merton talks to Stephen Springate about improvisation, Charlie Chaplin and how laughing at people falling over is part of the human condition.
‘‘Practice. That’s what it is in the end, just by doing it for a long time. Somebody asked me the other day whether we need to rehearse, but after doing it for 30 years there’s no need’’ states Paul Merton matter-of-factly as he explains how week after week he manages to put on a completely new routine, made up on the spot, with an ease that most comics would envy. He talks about the monumental task of touring an improv show as if he was talking about knitting or playing the clarinet.
Merton can trace his love of comedy back to the early 60s when he was barely more than a toddler, inspired by the clowns at the Circus Olympia in London: ‘‘The laughter that they received was just so hypnotic to me,” he explains “I loved it and I wanted to be part of that, that experience of creating laughter’’.
Merton first began to rise up the comic ranks in the early 80s as part of the edgier, anti-establishment ‘alternative comedy’ movement. He talks at length about how this movement, and modern comedy, only occurred through the opening of The Comedy Store in London 1979, where anyone could get up on stage and have a go.
‘‘I harboured great ambitions to be a comedian but before 1979 the only routes would have been Working Men’s clubs in the north which I would have been terrible at, Cambridge Footlights which I wasn’t going to get in to or even try, or becoming a Butlins Redcoat. There was no other way of getting experience working as a live comedic performer before The Comedy Store opened up…that’s when the circuit started up.”
Whereas many other alternative comedians of the time used their routines as a platform for their political agendas Merton has never been particularly political, instead brandishing a mostly improvised, surreal style of deadpan comedy which may take in anything and everything running through his head at the time.
‘‘Have I Got News For You is mainly improvisation,” he says “I’m usually saying something on the back of what somebody else has just said, and I don’t know what they’re going to say beforehand. Just A Minute is the same thing really; you just start off with enthusiasm and trust that you’ll end up somewhere amusing! It doesn’t always happen but enthusiasm will normally get you there in the end’’
“In that moment, you’re not thinking about the leaky tap, the boy that bullied you at school, the girl who never loved you”
Merton is currently touring the UK with his improvisation group Impro Chums, stopping at Cardiff on Mon 18 Nov. In the show Merton and his ‘chums’ create performances based on audience suggestions. Merton describes it ‘‘as a springboard for us to go into all sorts of realms…you never know what you’re going to be doing from one moment to the next’’.
“For me, the absolute appeal of it is because it’s improvised,” states Paul “every show is completely different. There’s a freshness and uniqueness to every individual show which is never replicated in any other show that you do’’.
Merton has always been very vocal about his passion for early cinema; among a number of other programs he has presented on the subject, the documentary Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns looked at his particular love for the silent comedians of early Hollywood. It is a subject that without any prompting he launches passionately and articulately into.
‘‘I remember seeing a bit of Charlie Chaplin on television when I was about four and my grandfather explained to me that this used to be the most famous man in the world.
Suddenly an actor who had worked on the London Broadway stage all their life…is being photographed by this new machine projected onto bed sheets throughout the world and your suddenly the most famous person in the world! People hadn’t heard of Christianity but had seen Charlie Chaplin, it’s extraordinary.’’
Have any of these black and white figures helped to form his work over the years?
‘‘I think what I tried to apply from particularly the principles of Keaton and Chaplin is how dedicated they were, how they really wanted it to be the best work they could do, and were always trying to improve on what they’d done before’’.
He continues; ‘‘it’s just about enjoying your work and doing the best thing that you can, thinking that you owe it to the public who are coming to see you to do your best. I learned from the example of Chaplin and Keaton not to disrespect the audience; I always assume that we’ve got a bright crowd, so you’re trying to do the best comedy that you can do, and not lowest common denominator stuff.’’.
He insists that a lot of silent comedy still works today: ‘‘We as human beings like visual comedy, you still see it on popular shows like You’ve Been Framed, pissed aunts at weddings falling over on polished dance halls. There’s something very fundamentally funny. My theory is that it goes right back to the time that the first human tried to walk on two legs and fell over, and the rest of the tribe were happily going round on all fours laughing at the stupidness of this individual’’
Throughout our conversation Merton makes it quite clear that comedy has never just been a way of getting his face on television. He is a comedian because he knows full well the healing power of laughter, having turned to it in many difficult points in his life, and it is the feeling he gets from giving this back to others which is why he does what he does. As he puts it: ‘‘When you’re in the middle of laughter, that’s all that exists in your entire world. In that moment, you’re not thinking about the leaky tap, the boy that bullied you at school, the girl who never loved you, you’re just swimming in endorphins…it’s wonderful. Comedy can be uplifting; it doesn’t have to be pointing a finger at less privileged members of society, it doesn’t have to dig at people from other nationalities, it can just be an uplifting joyful thing which can make you come out of the theatre feeling taller than when you went in, and if I can make that happen then great’’.
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth, Sun 17 Nov. Tickets: £10.50 – £21. Info: 01970 623 232 / www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Mon 18 Nov. Tickets: £22. Info: 029 2063 6464 / www.wmc.org.uk