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Paul Merton (born January 17, 1957) is a British
actor, deadpan comedian and writer, who is best
known as a panellist on Have I Got News For You
and Just a Minute on BBC Radio 4 and as the host
of Room 101 (television)|Room 101. 

His style is characterised by describing extremely
improbable scenarios with a straight - even
mournful looking - face.  He rapidly grabs hold of
any chance to expand on a subject and stretch its
credibility to snapping point.  This works
beautifully in improv and exceptionally well when
he is played off against more straight-laced
guests on panel shows; it has, however, been less
successful when Merton uses this form of
high-fantasy in a scripted form, as with his
sketch shows.

Born Paul Martin in the Parsons Green,
London|Parsons Green area of London, he gained his
earliest professional credits under that name. On
joining British Actors' Equity Association|Equity
he found that the name Paul Martin was already
taken, so he renamed himself after London Borough
of Merton|Merton, the district of London where he
grew up. Merton's Father was a train driver on the
London Underground and his Mother was a nurse.
When his Mother returned to work, Paul and his
younger sister were looked after by their
grandfather who lived with them in their council
flat. He often claims that he was inspired to go
into comedy at a young age watching clowns at a
circus, remembering "I had no idea that adults
could behave like that." He failed his
eleven-plus, and famously received an unclassified
grade for metal work at CSE before moving on to
Wimbledon College just as it became comprehensive.


After leaving school, Merton worked at the Tooting
Employment Office for ten years. Though he had
harboured serious ambitions of becoming a
performing comedian since his school days, it was
not until April 1982, at The Comedy Store,
London|the Comedy Store in Soho that his dream was
realised. He recalls that, on only his second or
third night, he found the dour role that was to
inform his comic approach ever since. 

One of these early routines at the Comedy Store
involved the report of a policeman who had been
given a hallucinogenic|hallucination drug. This
routine was very popular and went on to be
included in his television series. Merton recalls
"I walked all the way home to my bed-sit in
Streatham. I was on a cloud. And that one night
got me through every single bad gig after that -
and there were a lot of them. I was so lucky to
get that encouragement early on. It kept me going
over the next eighteen months of just dying the
whole time." 

In 1986, while performing on the Fringe in
Edinburgh, he was mugged while helping a friend
put up posters. He was kicked in the head and had
to go to hospital. A year later, Merton returned
to Edinburgh. His one-man show was receiving very
good reviews. However, while playing football with
fellow comedians, he broke his leg, and whilst in
hospital, he suffered a pulmonary embolism and
contracted hepatitis A. He lost the £3,000 he had
paid up front for the theatre and would have been
in worse trouble had the Comedy Store not held a
benefit for him. 

His breakthrough as a television performer came as
a result of the improvised comedy show Whose Line
Is It Anyway? from 1988 onwards, which moved to TV
from BBC Radio 4. Have I Got News For You started
in 1990, and two series of his own sketch show
Paul Merton: The Series followed soon after. Since
1999 he has been the host of Room 101
(television)|Room 101, a chat show in which guests
are offered the chance to discuss their pet hates
and consign them to the oblivion of Room 101.

Shortly before becoming a household name on
HIGNFY, Merton had suffered a mental breakdown and
booked himself into Maudsley psychiatric hospital
for six weeks, about which he has since talked
frankly. He had begun to hallucinate conversations
with friends.

He has been a member of the London Improvisational
comedy|improv group The Comedy Store Players since
1985, and still regularly performs with them.

After seven nominations for a BAFTA award for Best
Entertainment Performance, Merton finally won the
award in April 2003, ironically defeating fellow
HIGNFY star Angus Deayton who had just recently
been fired from the show.

Merton married the actress Caroline Quentin in
1990, but they separated in 1997. Merton's second
wife, Sarah Parkinson, died on September 23, 2003,
of breast cancer.

In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of
the Observer's 50 funniest|50 funniest acts in
British comedy. In The Comedian's Comedian, a 2005
Channel 4 poll of fellow comedians, he was voted
the 20th funniest comedian in the universe.

Merton's parody|spoof autobiography My Struggle
(apparently named after Mein Kampf) was published
in 1995 in the UK (Boxtree, ISBN 075220775).