Words matter. These are the best Paul Merton Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
And like the old stereotype, I overcame my shyness by making my friends laugh.
My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I’ve endured over the past twenty-five years.
I remember being fascinated by the very nature of comedy from the age of 10; why is this funny, and that isn’t?
Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way.
I don’t always vote in general elections, but I think I’ve always voted Labour.
In 1987, I was in Edinburgh doing my first one-man show. I took part in a kickabout with some fellow comedians and tripped over my trousers and heard this cracking sound in my leg. A couple of days later I went into a coma and was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism.
I really don’t take any interest at all in contemporary comedy.
On my first day in New York a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When I told him I didn’t he said, ‘Do you mind if I mug you here?’.
I’m always amazed to hear of air crash victims so badly mutilated that they have to be identified by their dental records. What I can’t understand is, if they don’t know who you are, how do they know who your dentist is?
There’s something magical about film, it’s the ultimate for me, because it’s kind of permanent – inasmuch as anything is. When I went to see Buster Keaton when I was about 14 and I came out of the cinema having really laughed at this film which had been made 50 years before, I thought: That’s immortality. It’s fantastic.
In 1986, I was attacked in the street as I helped Neil Mullarkey from the Comedy Store Players to put up posters. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time – midnight – and we were English. I got kicked in the head.
Generally speaking, politicians are an odd bunch. They seem to have very thick skins and genuinely don’t care what people think. And charm is a very important part of the politician’s armoury. I try to resist that kind of charm.
I never give anyone advice: it can backfire horribly. In the 1950s, Eric Morecambe told Ken Dodd to get his teeth fixed. But those teeth turned out to be one of Dodd’s big selling points.
The thing about improvisation is that it’s not about what you say. It’s listening to what other people say. It’s about what you hear.
I think having an outsider’s viewpoint is interesting and good, especially for a comedian.
When I wake up on a Monday morning and I realise I don’t have to go and work at the civil service, I really think I’ve won.
When things are difficult, awful, stressful, the thing that always gets you through is a sense of humour. I don’t mean – well, maybe I do – laugh at the hangman as he puts the noose around your neck. But an eye, an ear, for the ridiculous, the absurd in life, can get you through a lot.
Maybe there’s a perception of me as grumpy old bugger who suffers from depression. It’s a total misconception. I don’t think of myself as any grumpier than the next person. I’m not even grumpy first thing in the morning.
I’ll never forget my first experience of swede. It was at school and I thought I was getting mashed potato. I’ve never got over it.
It seems like a contradiction, but the shy person who is a performer actually does make sense, because in a way, when you’re young and shy, making people laugh is a good way to make friends. It’s an instant connection.
I was trying to organise my DVDs into a sort of chronological order, and I am afraid that it all trailed off after the Sixties.
It was a bizarre existence I led in my early twenties – that cliche of the comedian who goes out and entertains a roomful of people and then goes home to a lonely bedsit was unbelievably poignant for me because that was exactly what I was doing. I had periods of real loneliness.