Paul Merton Quotes

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?

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.

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?

At one point in the mid-Eighties I shared a promoter with the Smiths. One night, we were sitting backstage when Morrissey burst in, utterly distraught, sobbing his heart out. Turns out someone had thrown a sausage at him on stage during 'Meat Is Murder.'

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.

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.

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 was trying to organise my DVDs into a sort of chronological order, and I am afraid that it all trailed off after the Sixties.

I don't consider myself a fashion victim. I consider fashion a victim of me.

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.

I remember being fascinated by the very nature of comedy from the age of 10; why is this funny, and that isn't?

All disc jockeys are without talent. Noel Edmonds - I can't stand Noel Edmonds.

If you stay in a house and you go to the bathroom and there is no toilet paper, you can always slide down the banisters. Don't tell me you haven't done it.

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.

I don't always vote in general elections, but I think I've always voted Labour.

I looked at longevity in show business when I was about 13, and the people who seemed to have longevity were the ones who'd spent quite a bit of time learning about what they were doing before they made it.

If you became a comedian in the '80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned laughter is cheating.

I've never been disappointed by politicians. I've never invested that much in them in the first place.

Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way.

My favourite riposte to a heckle is to say, 'Excuse me, I'm trying to work here. How would you like it if I stood yelling down the alley while you're giving blow jobs to transsexuals?'

I have never sold my story, done Hello! magazine, any of that stuff. I'm not guilty of exploiting my private life for cash and then saying, 'Oh, I don't want to talk about my private life.' I've never crossed that line.

When I used to do the Edinburgh Festival, there was a bunch of guys selling fresh oysters and I'd eat ten daily - marvellous.

When I turned about 12 or 13, I realised that being funny wasn't about remembering jokes. It was about creating them.

I really don't take any interest at all in contemporary comedy.

Am I allowed to call myself working-class now? Because obviously I'm now very rich.

When I was nine I spent a lot of my time reading books about the history of comedy, or listening to the Goons or Hancock, humour from previous generations.

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.

Have you ever had sex with a horse?

And like the old stereotype, I overcame my shyness by making my friends laugh.

In fact, I don't watch a lot of contemporary comedy for fear of being influenced by it.