Po-faced Paul's really a jolly soul

YOU SHOULD never wholly believe what Paul Merton says about himself. For years the Have I Got News For You star let it be known that he left school with only a CSE in woodwork.

It wasn't true, but the comic possibilities of that fabrication were greater than the rather boring truth that he actually had GCE A-Levels in English and History.

Trouble is, other biographical facts sound invented. For example, his spell working at an employment office in Tooting. It's not the job that sounds improbable, but the location: Tooting, like Walthamstow, is one of those places with a name which seems to inspire mirth in comic script-writers and comedians alike.

"You must never confuse show business with reality," he once said in an interview. Paul Merton has made his fortune by appearing to be a po-faced absurdist, liable to take flight on wings of surreal fancy without once smiling or chuckling at his own jokes.

It's a stage mask, of course, a trade mark. Whereas Billy Connolly can hardly get to a punch-line without creasing up in helpless hilarity, Merton puts all his effort into remaining ambiguously dead-pan. Audiences laugh because Merton's face twitches between apparent bewilderment and knowing irony.

In real life he claims to be much jollier than he appears to be in the company of Angus Deayton and Ian Hislop on TV. Taller too, just like his stories.

"I was obsessed by comedy from a very early age. You make friends more easily if you are funny. I was always trying to be funny in school. From being very young I'd listen to Max Miller, The Goons, watch the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, read a Woody Allen book. I'd tape Tony Hancock shows off the radio," he said.

His recent attempt to re-invent some of the Hancock Half-Hours, with himself as the lad from Cheam, failed probably because Galton and Simpson's lines had become inextricably part of the Hancock legend. Quite simply, they didn't belong in Merton's mouth.

To date that has been his only notable failure in a comedy career which began in 1981, when he was invited to do a five-minute spot at a seedy venue above a Soho strip club. He only had one act - a policeman giving evidence in court after taking LSD - but the boozy audience at The Comedy Store loved it and demanded an encore.

"It was a great time to start out because there weren't very many other venues around, and not many other comedians either. There was a gap for new performers to come in. There would be four acts on the bill and you might be the only comedian, alongside a juggler, a poet and a musician," he said.

Now, we're led to believe, Merton is returning to his roots in stand-up comedy after an absence of ten years. But is this true? Bradford Theatres' Press Office says that Paul Merton appeared at St George's Hall approximately five years ago.

What is indisputable is that the one-man show he's currently taking round the country, And This Is Me, is based on events in the life of the real Paul Merton.

"When I used to do stand-up I was always just the next act, and people were there for a night out not because I was on the bill. But since I stopped doing that I've become well known for television and I thought that rather than just revive an old act, people might be interested in something that is truer than a selection of made-up stuff.

"I don't think the material is immediately interesting just because it happened to me. The challenge is to make what happened to me funny, and give it a purpose and a slightly tougher edge. At the end of the day it has to be entertainment and you choose your material according to that criteria. There's no point saying: Here are my x-rays from the age of seven.

"As a comic you have to have many strings to your bow and you have to do it your way, rather than presenting what people expect of you.

"People who only know me from TV and then meet me are often surprised that I'm a jolly person, they expect someone who is intensely interested in getting questions right about the news. And I'm taller than they expect me to be...The person I am on stage is very different from the person I am on screen," he said.

And that's where we came in.

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