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Re: The divine Mister M

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thomaswake16Oct 31, 2007
 

 
Not sure if this was mentioned anywhere else, but Paul will
apparently be on Steve Wright's show on Radio 2 tomorrow afternoon,
and was also on Jonathan Ross last Saturday. (I assume by the nature
of this group that we all know how the Listen Again facility works.)

--- In just-a-minute@..., Dean Bedford <dbedford@...>
wrote:

>
> Paul Merton has just released a book about Silent Comedy and as a

result

> has been doing interviews in the papers.
>
> As always Paul is a somewhat enigmatic interview subject.
>
> Here he is in The Guardian
>
> 'I think I'm sane'
>
> Famed for his surreal sense of humour and deadpan delivery, Paul

Merton

> is one of Britain's best-loved comedians. He talks to Sam Wollaston
> about his distressing 'manic episode', his silent movie heroes, and

why

> you'll never see him smile on TV
>
> The first person I meet on walking into the central London building
> where Paul Merton's management company is based is Paul Merton.

This is

> not entirely a coincidence - I have, after all, come here to

interview

> him. But I wasn't expecting to arrive at exactly the same time and

see

> him here, downstairs in the lobby. "Hello," he says.
>
> I haven't really prepared any lobby questions, and mumble something
> about the building. It was the old Holborn town hall, he says as we
> wait, a bit awkwardly, for the lift. It's one of those ancient

lifts

> that goes up the centre of the stairwell, we're the only two people

in

> it, and we follow normal British lift etiquette as it squeaks

slowly up

> towards the third floor: we stare silently at our feet (his are
> surprisingly far from his head). But upstairs, installed in a comfy
> office, it becomes easier.
>
> I'm not sure that in an hour I really get to know Paul Merton at

all. I

> suspect that people who have known him for years sometimes wonder

if

> they know him at all. But he's very good company. On Have I Got

News for

> You, now in its 18th year, Merton's job is to counterbalance Ian
> Hislop's smarty-pants wittiness with surreal rants. He takes a

subject

> in his teeth, shakes it viciously from side to side like a mad dog,

then

> runs with it to the furthest reaches of credulity. His job is also

to

> interrupt, to put down, not to laugh - not even to smile - and to

wear

> unsuccessful clothing combinations. But in the flesh (which is pale
> almost to the point of translucence, and plentiful, especially

round the

> jowls), he is charming. He fetches coffee, he's chatty, he smiles,

he

> even laughs - ha ha ha ha ha, like a Bren gun. At his own jokes,

too.

>
> "I am playing a part to an extent," he admits, when I ask if the

deadpan

> thing is an act. But he says he didn't, as I suggest, get it from

Buster

> Keaton, one of his silent movie heroes about whom he has just

written a

> book. "It comes from one of the first things I did as a stand-up in

the

> early 80s. It was a thing called A Policeman on Acid, which was
> basically this policeman recounting in court the time someone gave

him

> some acid and describing his trip. And I realised then it was much
> funnier if the policeman himself didn't find anything he was saying
> funny, so the deadpan approach came from there, and I suppose that

kind

> of set a style. I wasn't deliberately copying Keaton at that point."
>
> The Policeman on Acid sketch was a catalyst for Merton's career; it
> always got a laugh even when other material didn't, and convinced

him he

> had done the right thing in leaving his job at the Tooting

employment

> office to be a comedian. Yes, Merton has taken acid himself, once

("it

> was very amusing, I have to say"), yes, he can still remember the

sketch

> pretty much word for word, and yes, he will give me a private
> performance. "Wednesday 14th October last, approximately 10.43 hay

em,

> while pat-rolling along Streatham High Road, I observed a motor
> ve-hehicle ..."
>
> It's still very funny, from the exaggerated police-speak and
> pronunciation, to when he describes - deadpan of course - the LSD

taking

> effect: "I encountered Constable Parish, who approached me

disguised as

> a fortnight's holiday in Benidorm ..."
>
> Merton's book is a forensic study of all the greats of silent

cinema -

> Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, early Laurel and Hardy, and of course
> Charlie Chaplin, for whom he has a special affection. It's not just

that

> they both have sad faces and working-class south London

backgrounds;

> it's the work of Chaplin, who kept raising the bar to new levels,

that

> Merton really admires. He can speak at length with great authority

and

> even greater enthusiasm about all of them - the enduring magic of
> Chaplin, how Keaton running is one of cinema's great joys, about

how

> Oliver Hardy gives Stan Laurel a context in which to shine, or

about the

> almost unbearable climax Lloyd builds up to in Safety Last,

dangling off

> the bending hands of a clock, hundreds of feet above the cars below.
>
> Would Merton have liked to have been around then? "Hollywood in the

20s?

> Oh yes. Just as a gag writer would be fantastic. Can it be

arranged?"

>
> What about being in the films? "Not being able to talk would be a
> problem." True, Merton without words would be pretty pointless,

though

> on HIGNFY he does sometimes do a puzzled look or an exaggerated
> double-take to get a laugh.
>
> I wonder if he is genuinely interested in current affairs, and in
> politics, when the show's not on. "I don't watch Newsnight," he

says.

> "I've never been disappointed by politicians. I've never invested

that

> much in them in the first place."
>
> What does he vote? "I've never really said."
>
> Why not say now? "OK, I can't conceive of a situation or a set of
> circumstances that would lead me to vote Conservative."
>
> Meaning he votes Labour? "Erm, yes ... I don't always vote in

general

> elections, but I think I've always voted Labour. The Tory stuff

doesn't

> do it for me, ha ha ha."
>
> He tells me about bumping into Boris Johnson at Lord's and being

amazed

> that Boris asked him for advice on his mayoral campaign. "It was

nice of

> him to ask, but I'm not really a political animal."
>
> Would Boris be a good mayor of London? "No," he says without

thinking.

> "Well, just the other day he said he'd had his bike stolen several
> times. I mean, if he can't look after his bike, how's he going to

look

> after London?"
>
> A couple of days after our interview, on the first of the new

series of

> Have I Got News For You, Merton does the same joke about Boris and

the

> bicycle. Hey, if a policeman on LSD can work over and over again,

why

> not Boris on a bike? Those surreal rants, for which he is now

famous,

> may not be as spontaneous as they seem.
>
> Merton's rise hasn't all been plain sailing. Just as his television
> career was taking off, largely thanks to a Metropolitan police

officer's

> inadvertent experiments with hallucinogens, he had what he

describes as

> a "manic episode", and ended up going into the Maudsley hospital

(he

> wasn't sectioned, he's keen to point out - he checked himself in).
>
> He was having paranoid delusions, convinced he was being followed

by

> Freemasons. It was, he says, nothing to do with depression, but a
> combination of exhaustion and anti-malaria drugs he was taking. "It
> wasn't about depression, it was about excitement. I couldn't stop

having

> ideas. I'd go into a pub and say: 'It would be so much better if

the bar

> was over there and you made the entrance there.' And they'd look at

each

> other and say: 'Who's this bloke who's telling us how to design a

pub?'

> It was just pouring out of me."
>
> Merton had group therapy, along with a man who thought he was Jesus

and

> a woman who agreed ("So he's already got one disciple, he's doing

all

> right"). He also went to see a therapist privately, who said he had

been

> running on pure adrenalin, was heading for a breakdown, and put him

on

> Largactyl. He would have liked to have got a certificate or badge

on

> leaving hospital saying he was legally sane. Is he? Sane? "Yeah, I

think

> so. Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world

your

> way."
>
> More recently, Merton's life fell apart again. In 2003 his second

wife,

> Sarah Parkinson, who he had been with since his first marriage to
> Caroline Quentin ended, died of cancer. She had elected to treat it

with

> holistic remedies instead of having chemotherapy, and was 41 when

she

> died. They had spoken of wanting to have children together.
>
> Comedy worked as therapy in some ways. "Yes, I went down, after

Sarah

> died, to the Comedy Store - not to work, but just to be among

people I

> knew. And there's 300 people laughing in a room, there's a real

positive

> upside to it. And you're only aware of one thing at one time; if

you're

> laughing about something, that's the only thing that's in your

entire

> universe. So it's an escape, and a relief. I'm not saying laugh and

the

> tears go away, but if you're minded to find funniness in

situations, it

> does help."
>
> Is he happy now? "Yeah. I mean, doing this book is a major thing

cos

> I've handwritten it. I was happier hand-writing. It's about 100,000
> words. The surreal nature of the book trade is that back in

February I

> went to Bruges to this booksellers' convention ..." Suddenly, we're

not

> talking about happiness at all, but about book publishing. Merton

does

> that a lot, just meanders off somewhere. I don't know if he knows

he's

> doing it, or if he's doing it to avoid subjects he doesn't want to

talk

> about. And I don't know if he's happy, or even if he knows if he's

happy

> or not.
>
> Content is probably a better word. I ask him what gets him going.

His

> work, he says. "But I'm also excited about not working - genuinely.

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".
>
> Here he is in The Telegraph
>
> Paul Merton: Silence is golden
>
> He counts Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as his idols and

doesn't do

> Hello! The TV star talks to Elizabeth Grice about his

unconventional

> career
>
> How we love the sad clown. We easily buy into the idea that, deep

down,

> the people who make us laugh are tormented souls; private lives a

mess,

> self-belief shaky as a blancmange.
>
> So when a comedian has his moment of being tossed about on the

cruel sea

> of life, we hunker down to watch the fulfilment of a cherished
> stereotype – not without sympathy, but knowingly, as if this was

bound

> to happen.
>
> Paul Merton has a story to illustrate this point. He once grew a

beard

> so he could get about without being recognised as the straight-

faced,

> laser-wit of Have I Got News For You.
>
> It was about the time the show's presenter, Angus Deayton, had to

leave

> because of a sex and cocaine scandal.
>
> Merton didn't want to be drawn into the ruckus but his camouflage

was

> more impressive than he realised: "a trampy figure" got on the bus

next

> to him at London Bridge and offered him a swig from his can of

lager.

>
> Merton and his wife, Sarah Parkinson, who was with him, laughed

about it

> for ages. But when the story surfaced in a newspaper after Sarah's

death

> from cancer in 2003, it was used to demonstrate how, sunk in grief,

he

> had supposedly let himself go to such an extent that he was
> indistinguishable from a wino.
>
> "It's like catnip to some people," he says. "The idea that a

comedian

> should also be the person with tears in his eyes, heartbroken, but

still

> making people laugh. Most comics aren't manic depressives or sad

people.

> You can't draw the conclusion that because you make people laugh

you are

> battling inner sadness."
>
> He wonders why people were surprised that he could perform his

usual

> verbal cartwheels in a new series of Have I Got News For You three

weeks

> after Sarah's death.
>
> Or that he was down at London's Comedy Store the next Sunday, in a

room

> with 300 people, all laughing.
>
> "You can only concentrate on one thing at a time. If you're

laughing

> about something, there is nothing else that exists for you at that
> moment.
>
> "So that is a great way to deal with this stuff – not to laugh

about it,

> or at it, but as a distraction that takes you somewhere else. It is
> therapeutic."
>
> In conversation, Merton is thoughtful, warm, enthusiastic – and not
> trying to be remotely funny. His shirt is subdued, unlike any of

the

> execrable numbers he wears on television, and his fine-rimmed

specs,

> floppy hair and sun-starved complexion give him the look of a

mature

> student who has spent too long in the library.
>
> In a way, this is exactly what he is. Merton has just finished a
> passionately comprehensive book about his comic heroes of the

silent

> screen – Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and

Harold

> Lloyd. Anyone who saw his Silent Clowns television series last year

or

> one of his nationwide tours will have realised he is a man in the

grip

> of a grand obsession, a potential comedy anorak if he didn't have

the

> day jobs.
>
> Once he gets going on what makes a great visual gag, or how Harold

Lloyd

> stood stock still, framed by a window as a house front came

crashing

> down on him, he is mesmerising – just as well because it's very
> difficult to stop him.
>
> Merton was gripped by visual comedy from the age of five when he

saw the

> clowns at Bertram Mills' Circus and realised grown-ups could be

silly.

> "Colourful clothes, big boots, buckets of whitewash, exploding

cars,

> vats of sausages... I was filled with glee at adults making fools

of

> themselves, not being in control."
>
> A shy boy at school, he discovered he could make kids in the dinner
> queue laugh by doing impressions of the teachers. "I loved the

whole

> power of making somebody laugh. When I was eight, I knew every

single

> joke from the Beano and the Dandy. Then in my teens, I started to

be

> able to ad lib with people, to be funny spontaneously, which is

more or

> less what I do in my professional career."
>
> Young Merton (or Paul Martin, as he was called then) started

collecting

> old black-and-white silent comedies in Super 8 home-movie format,
> projecting them onto a sheet on his bedroom wall, analysing every

scene.

> It wasn't a hobby he advertised among his friends.
>
> At 13 he saw Buster Keaton's The General at the Academy Cinema in

Oxford

> Street and came out on a "cushion of joy". "It was immortality," he
> says. "I was a teenager watching a film made 50 years ago and the

jokes

> were still working. I was entranced. I wanted to make something, be
> something, do something that would survive 50 years.
>
> "Now, with the proliferation of comedy and the proliferation of
> television, you just become a tiny speck in it all. The one thing

that

> might survive is the book because, in 50 years' time, people will

still

> know about Chaplin and Keaton. I suppose I've hitched my wagon to

their

> immortality."
>
> There was no family history of performing. His father was a Tube

driver

> and his mother a nurse. They lived in a council flat in Parsons

Green.

>
> Anxious to postpone the moment when he might discover his talent

didn't

> match his ambition, Merton became a civil servant in the Tooting
> employment office and wrote scripts in his spare time.
>
> In 1980, he left to see whether he could hack it in comedy. They

gave

> him three boxes of Conqueror watermarked writing paper as a leaving
> present and he kept it for nine years – until he was commissioned

to

> write his own Channel 4 television series.
>
> At the Comedy Store in April 1982, he received a standing ovation

as a

> policeman reporting an incident while under the influence of an
> hallucinogenic drug; a much-loved routine that established his

deadpan

> style – and buoyed him through the bad gigs that inevitably

followed. He

> walked from Soho to his Streatham bedsit in a daze.
>
> Merton wasn't going to be the firework that fizzles away in the

mud, so

> he honed his craft slowly and carefully on the comedy circuit for

five

> years without an agent.
>
> The day after his show at the Edinburgh Festival received rave

reviews

> in 1987, he broke his leg playing football, developed a pulmonary
> embolism and caught hepatitis A. It was touch and go. While
> recuperating, he decided to try to break into television. He wrote
> scripts for Julian Clary and appeared on Whose Line is it Anyway?
>
> The happy delirium of being commissioned to write his own show for
> Channel 4, coupled with a course of anti-malaria tablets, sent him
> slightly manic.
>
> "I couldn't stop having ideas," he recalls. "I couldn't stop

talking. I

> was behaving manically anyway and the pills made it worse. I

imagined a

> conversation about Freemasons that never happened."
>
> In his six weeks at the Maudsley psychiatric hospital – plastic

cutlery,

> cardboard plates – he felt uncomfortable in group therapy sessions
> because his anguish didn't quite measure up to the wrist-slashings

and

> Messianic delusions of others. "I wasn't going to get much sympathy

for

> the fact that Channel 4 had postponed my television series."
>
> He is open about his stay there because he feels mental health

issues

> are not properly understood. "There is a sense of shame about being
> mentally ill and that can affect your recovery."
>
> Since then, Merton has been through the emotional wringer but

avoided

> being confessional about it."I have never done the Hello! thing,
> discussing my private life as part of my career. It's no about

seeing

> myself as a celebrity, really, or being comfortable with red carpet
> moments."
>
> His first marriage, to the actress Caroline Quentin, ended after

six

> years. His second wife, Sarah, died of breast cancer at the age of

41.

> They had been hoping for a baby. After surgery, she rejected
> chemotherapy and he supported her through every step of her

alternative

> programme.
>
> "Rather than raging against fate," she wrote, "we have decided to

view

> what is happening to us as part of a spiritual journey." She also

paid

> tribute to Merton's strength. "He was still recording Room 101 when

I

> was in hospital, but he came to see me twice a day. To have to be
> spontaneously funny when your wife is being operated on for cancer

must

> be a nightmare."
>
> Her death became news. "The curious thing about being a famous

person

> who has had a terrible thing happen," he says, "is that people know
> about it. They are sympathetic. If I had been working in the Civil
> Service, I don't know if I would have been able to cope as well."
>
> Paul Merton on television is lardy-faced, lugubrious, quick-witted,

a

> man who can strike sparks from damp wood. But in real life, there

is

> none of that assumed sullenness or killer repartee. He seems to be

a

> happy man, doing what he always wanted to do. Nine times nominated

for a

> Bafta award, he finally won one in 2003. He still performs on stage

at

> the Comedy Store every week "to keep match fit" and takes nothing

for

> granted.
>
> "When I wake up on a Monday morning and I'm not working in the

Civil

> Service, it immediately gets the week off to a good start," he

says. "It

> is a wonderful thing, making people laugh. When people recognise

me,

> there is a smile on their face. Being known for being funny is just
> about the best thing to be known for."
>
> This is a review of the book in The Times
>
> Silent Comedy by Paul Merton
> Laurel and Hardy
> Reviewed by James Christopher
>
> I had no idea that my favourite comedian suffered delusions of

academic

> grandeur. I know that Paul Merton is a genius. He can twitter for
> England on Just a Minute, and is a principled bruiser on Have I Got

News

> For You. But his obsession with silent black-and-white comedy is a

total

> surprise.
>
> I was flabbergasted to learn that this verbal wizard had assembled

a

> whole series (albeit for BBC Four, a station thjat many of us have

yet

> to discover) on Silent Clowns. And I am stunned by Silent Comedy,

the

> book that his series inspired.
>
> It's not a great piece of literature, and I'm no big fan of this

early

> genre. But the personal touches impress, and the multi-coloured

pages

> are cheeky. Merton slips two-page features about seminal films or
> forgotten stars into almost every chapter. I would like to add that

he

> wears his research lightly, but that would be a bare-faced lie.
>
> He has spent his life in awe of Hollywood's two-tone pioneers, and
> loudly champions them. The greatest hits of Buster Keaton, Charlie
> Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are laid out in
> exacting detail. Merton rarely has a bad word to say about any of

them.

> Their pay cheques are scrutinised, their silly wounds and guilty
> indiscretions carefully logged. Their best gags and films are
> spreadeagled on the page. But he has an aversion to skewering his

heroes

> in public, even when warranted. Merton will never be Kenneth Anger,

and

> Silent Comedy is no Hollywood Babylon.
>
> His obsession with the era began at the circus. The giddy spectacle

of

> adult clowns behaving badly cast a profound spell on Merton. The

silent

> movies that he could see as a child – in the cinema or on

television –

> excited him beyond words. In a sense his book is about how he grew

up.

> It is also a map of the evolution of film in the age before sound.
>
> Merton never really says why he is so enamoured of Chaplin, Buster

et

> al, but he leaps to their defence before the reader has time even

to

> wave a ponderous glove. We must never get caught in "the tiresomely
> idiot debate on Keaton versus Chaplin"; we must laud them for "the

great

> works of art" that each apparently inspired in the other.
>
> But if these blockbusting, super-famous clowns were such great

friends,

> why did they never work together? The invariably awful women that

they

> married might confess if Merton allowed them half a sentence. He
> doesn't. He has a breathtaking grasp of the male Hollywood ego, but

a

> shrivelling lack of interest in their unhappy wives.
>
> The book bobs between Merton's huge bank of extraordinary

biographical

> details, and prosaic lists of what Charlie/Buster/Harold did next.

Jokes

> explained are jokes ruined, and Merton's tedious descriptions of

almost

> every gag hatched between 1899 and 1936 could fray the patience of

a

> saint. But his inside tracks on such classics as The Tramp, The
> Goldrush, Steamboat Bill Junior and Modern Times are deep and

serious

> pleasures.
>
> The great surprise is how close these rivals were in age and

ambition.

> All share the same starting line, and all have a Dickensian

backstory.

> Chaplin was 5 when he was tossed on stage because his music hall

mother

> couldn't finish a song. She never performed again. Lloyd — best
> remembered for hanging off the face of a clock — managed to blow

off

> half of his hand in one stunt and was lucky to keep his face.

Keaton

> came within seconds of drowning in Our Hospitality, and broke his

neck

> in Sherlock Junior.
>
> Merton protests that he has no favourites, but Chaplin gets the

most

> attention. There's a palpable sense that this melancholic clown is

the

> trailblazer. He was the first to make huge amounts of money from
> two-reel shorts. He was the first to make a full-length comic

feature

> (The Tramp, 1915). By 1916 he was one of the most famous actors on

the

> planet, and wise enough to take control of his own productions. His
> rivals marvelled at his extravagant retakes, and the time and money

he

> spent on throwaway gags. The British actor was a fierce

perfectionist. A

> lens scratch that ruined the negative of The Circus in 1928 cost

him a

> fortune when he viewed the rushes and decided to reshoot the entire

film.

>
> Chaplin's down-and-out pathos touched the hearts of millions.

Merton's

> prose turns into puddles when he describes scenes from The Kid, A

Dog's

> Life, and City Lights. But he is almost prudishly circumspect about
> Chaplin's personal disasters and controversial marriages to two
> teenagers.
>
> Silent Comedy is a terrific history of props and pratfalls. It

sings

> when Merton gives up being descriptive and puts himself on the

page. His

> own experiences of performing, notably at the Comedy Store in front

of

> boozy crowds on Saturday nights, ring horribly true.
>
> But this book is not a confession. It's surprisingly serious. The

wealth

> of posters, graphics, and original pictures do not disguise the

lofty

> research. Merton is unfortunately prone to those fact-crunching

longeurs

> that can spoil the best film histories. That said, I'm a better

person

> for having read this. The heroes, victims, and survivors earn their
> tears. I wish I could say the same of today's.
>

 
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