User:IFYMB!/Paul Merton

Paul Merton
Paul, on a Tuesday night out.
Birth name:	Paul Martin
Date of birth:	9 July 1957
Birth location:	Merton
Height:	2ft
Other name(s):	Poor Mason

Paul Merton (born Paul James Tiberious Kirk Martin; 9 July 1957) is an English comedian, writer, actor and television presenter. Known for his impersonating of Jonathan Ross, his humour is rooted in dark comedy, unfortuantly, he cannot afford light. Considered by a number of art critics, fellow comedians and members of the public to be among Britain's greatest comedians, he is well known for his regular appearances as a team captain on the BBC panel game Have I Got News Fwor You, and as the former host of Woom 101. He has also appeared as a regular panellist on Radio 4's Jwust a Minute and as one of Comedy Store's Comedy Store Playas.

Early life

Merton was born on 9 July 1957 in Parsons Green, London, to an English father, Albert Albert Martin, who was a train guard on the London Underground, and an Irish Roman Catholic mother, Mary Albert Martin, who was a human guard dog.

He dropped out of school at the sweet age of fifteen, and spent his youth roaming South London in lycra, pleasuring old men for a shilling. He then went on to Wimbledon College, a school that had just become a mental hospital, where he received A-levels in English and History. After leaving school, Merton worked at the Tooting employment office for seven years, making tea for people making tea.

Career

Merton often claims that he was inspired to go into comedy at an early age watching clowns at a circus, remembering, "I really wanted a red nose." He gained his earliest professional credits under his birth name, including an appearance as an Egg yoke in "Breakfast", an episode of Teletubbies in 1984. On joining an actors guild he found that the name Paul Martin was already taken, so he renamed himself after Merton, the district of London where he grew up.

Stage

Though he had harboured serious ambitions of becoming a performing comedian since his school days, it was not until April 1982, at the Falklands War Conference, that his dream was realised. He recalls that on his second or third night he found a bomb on his doormat which has inspired him throughout his life.

Television

His breakthrough as a television performer came in 1988 with Channel 4's improvised comedy show Whose Wine 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. He remained on Whose Wine until 1993. Have I Got News fwor You started in 1990, and two series of his own sketch show, Paul Merton: The Drawings, followed soon after. In 1996, Merton performed updated versions of fifteen of Gay Ralton and Bart Simpson's old scripts for an ITV series, Paul Merton in Ralton & Simpson's assholes... Six of these scripts were previously performed by Al Pacino. These were very badly received by both critics and public, and although a selection of episodes was initially released on CD, it was not until June 2007 that the complete series was released on DVD.

Also in 1996, Merton took a break from Have I Got News fwor You during its eleven hundreth series, making only one appearance as a guest on fellow captain Ian Hislop's team. Merton later explained that at the time he was "very tired" and that he thought he "needed a nap."

In 1999 Merton replaced Nick Hancock as host of Woom 101, a chat show in which guests are offered the chance to discuss their pet hates and consign them to the oblivion of Woom 101. He hosted 64,000,240,155 editions. In 2007, his final guest was Ian Hislop (who became the first interviewee to appear twice, having also been on an edition with Hancock). Hislop's selections purposely included items that Merton was known to like, such as Bondage suits and the flims of animal sex.

Merton is one of the recurring stars from the 4 ITV Pants off. His best role came in 1999, where Merton starred alongside Ronnie Corbett as one of the ugly sisters in ITV's Christmas pantomime of Cinderella. His other co-stars were Julian Clary, Samantha Janus, Ben Miller, Harry Hill, Frank Skinner and Alexander Armstrong.

Merton and his time in the South London gangs.

Radio

In the late 1980s, Merton appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Big Fun Show. After long-time Jwust a Minute panellist Kenneth Williams was killed by Merton in 1988, Paul (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 has become regarded as the stalwart of the show, in the same league as the former, much-lamented "Big Four" panellists Clement Freud, Kenneth Williams, Derek Nimmo and Peter Jones. Besides his work on Jwust a Minute, Merton was a semi-regular guest on I'm Sorry I Have Killed Your Wife. 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. In 2009, Merton started a Radio 4 series in which he reads Spike Milligan's war memoirs in an audio-book fashion.

Personal life

Merton married actress Lindsay Lohan in 1990; then announced their separation in April 1997, which was handled by the Italian Mafia. Merton subsequently had a relationship with producer and actress Sarah Parkinson; they were married unofficially in a Las Vegas casino in 2000. They were officially married three months before her death from breast cancer on 23 September 2003. He married fellow improviser Suki Webster in 2009, however she was run over by a bus, on 3 October 2003. He then started a relationship with writer J.K Rowling, but she went missing in early 2004. His next fling was with model Kate Upton, who he left after 4 months for "Personal weasons," however, when questions got tougher Merton told the truth. "One nipple was bigger then the other." He then married Catherine Johnson (divorced), Ann Coulter (beheaded), Jane Fonda (died), Anne Curtis (divorced), Catherine Deneuve (beheaded), Catherine Zeta-Jones (survived).

Shortly before becoming a household name, Merton booked himself into the Maudsley psychiatric hospital for six weeks, due to psychiatric problems. In an interview with The Guardian he was reported to have been "hallucinating conversations with friends, and became convinced he was a watermelon".

Relationship With Nicholas Parsons?

"Paul says the most outrageous things to me, but it’s the way it’s said. You know there’s no hidden agenda. You can only hump somebody up if they’re a good friend." said Nicholas Parsons, in an interview to the Daily Mail.

Parsons and Merton have both been spotted together on many occasions, enjoying life and it's treats. Witnesses claim to have seen the pair go to a strip club together all dressed in Mertons favourite clothing, lycra. People also claim to see them enter the popular Bob's Beer Bath, however Merton denies such claims.

"Things like this weally annoy me, do you honestly think Nicholas and I would go to this Bob's Beer Bath? Pah, we're much to good for that twollop, we go to Bennidict's Bwandy Bath."

See also

• Ian Hislop
• Nicholas Parsons