Paul Merton Quotes
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I don't always vote in general elections, but I think I've always voted Labour.
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If you became a comedian in the '80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned laughter is cheating.
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When I used to do the Edinburgh Festival, there was a bunch of guys selling fresh oysters and I'd eat ten daily - marvellous.
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When I turned about 12 or 13, I realised that being funny wasn't about remembering jokes. It was about creating them.
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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.'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way.
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All disc jockeys are without talent. Noel Edmonds - I can't stand Noel Edmonds.
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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?
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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.
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I don't consider myself a fashion victim. I consider fashion a victim of me.
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In fact, I don't watch a lot of contemporary comedy for fear of being influenced by it.
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Am I allowed to call myself working-class now? Because obviously I'm now very rich.
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I really don't take any interest at all in contemporary comedy.
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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.
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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.
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And like the old stereotype, I overcame my shyness by making my friends laugh.
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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?
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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.
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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?'
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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.
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I've never been disappointed by politicians. I've never invested that much in them in the first place.
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I think having an outsider's viewpoint is interesting and good, especially for a comedian.
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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.
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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.
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I remember being fascinated by the very nature of comedy from the age of 10; why is this funny, and that isn't?
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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.
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Have you ever had sex with a horse?
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