From birth to mirth, Merton is telling it too straight

The deadpan comedian has another go at an autobiography, this time telling it straight
Funny man: Paul Merton (Picture: Rex)
REX
William Moore9 October 2014

Only When I Laugh: My Autobiography Paul Merton (Ebury Press, £20)

This is Paul Merton’s second stab at an autobiography. Sort of. His 1995 showbiz spoof, with the Führer-esque title My Struggle, detailed the rise to fame of a fictionalised Merton. Now the deadpan comedian has another go, this time telling it straight.

After unexciting early chapters covering his shy childhood in Sixties Fulham and then Morden, the pace picks up when Merton becomes involved in London’s alternative comedy scene, for which he shows a fanboyish love.

An Alexei Sayle set in 1980 is life-changing: “Seeing Alexei that night, so close up and volcanic, was the comedic equivalent of witnessing The Sex Pistols live, or America’s first good look at the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.”

Inspired to perform, he takes to the stage for the first time in a two-man sketch show in Swansea before an audience of eight.

As Merton broke into television and radio, he withheld from any kind of wild, showbiz lifestyle. Half an LSD tab in 1977 is as rock ’n’ roll as things get. It is legal pharmaceuticals, in fact, that cause Merton to have a brief manic episode in 1990. Thanks to a wrong dose of anti-malaria pills, he broke down in tears at a New Year’s Eve party believing he was Jesus. When admitted to the Maudsley psychiatric hospital, he became convinced that a cleaner was trying to warn him about a bugged phone with her plastic cone marked “caution”.

Merton meets many comedy greats — Peter Cook, Eric Idle, Spike Milligan — but his encounters reveal little (an exchange with Robin Williams lasts all of three words). And he is more likely to praise his co-stars than indulge in insider gossip: Nicholas Parsons is a “marvel” and Ian Hislop is a “gentleman in every respect”.

Non-comedians are fair game for mockery, though. Ann Widdecombe, hosting Have I Got News For You, was “like some kind of comedic King Herod strangling new jokes at birth”. But his claws quickly retract.

If Merton wants to leave a squeaky-clean impression, he need not worry. He comes across as hard-working and down-to-earth. But his comic qualities, at home on screen, translate unevenly to the page. Merton acknowledges he is not at his best when he’s solo: “Stand-up felt like I was drawing in pencil compared to the lush Technicolor pastures of group work.” Here, then, he does not play to his strengths.

Go to standard.co.uk/booksdirect to buy this book for £16.50, or phone 0843 060 0029, free UK p&p

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