Paul Merton watched himself on Whose Line Is It Anyway? on a TV set in the corner of his psychiatric ward.

It was several years ago, but it must have seemed like only yesterday as he relived the experience for last night's audience. He did it with such detail and clarity that for a moment it seemed as if he was transporting himself back there.

Merton's life has been marked by a series of medical crises - a mental breakdown, a pulmonary embolism, hepatitis A - and in his current one-man tour he recalls them with surprising and refreshing candour.

"There I was, cracking gags as the gates slammed behind me," he says of that journey to the psychiatric ward.

Merton's down-to-earth frankness suits him well, and even despite its occasionally serious overtones, this is a far funnier vehicle for him than the show he took to the Palladium a few years ago.

"I went to the newsagent the other day. I said, 'Have you got a copy of Psychic News?' He said, 'You tell me'."

He imagined the poet Coleridge as a stand-up comedian, and used the idea as an excuse to reel off a collection of old music hall jokes.

"What about the Aga Khan? He made a fortune out of those cookers."

With nearly two hours of new material, just a single chair as a prop and a cripplingly long list of one-nighters stretching ahead of him, he hadn't made things easy for himself.

But as he had discovered already, good comedy is sometimes forged out of authentic pain.

David Behrens

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