Paul Merton Interview: Make believe

Paul Merton, is in town with his Impro Chums with a show that could be about absolutely anything, and he’s eager to see it!

Paul Merton, one of the best off-the-cuff comedy performers in the country, puts his finger on why doing improvisation is quite such fun. “It’s just doing what we all do as kids – playing endless, imaginative games,” says the immensely popular comedian.

“As a child, you don’t need much. I remember as a young boy pushing a toy car up an armchair and suddenly it became a mountain. Kids often unpack a Christmas present and end up playing with the box. Impro is like playtime – the bit of school you liked! If you spark each other off in improvisation, it creates a really good spirit. It’s the spirit of the playground.”
And, you will be delighted to hear, you can now enjoy that spirit for yourself as his acclaimed improvisational show, Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, comes to the Theatre Royal Brighton this week. Paul and his Chums – Mike McShane (who has just finished starring in a lauded London production of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Assassins), Lee Simpson, Richard Vranch and Suki Webster – are at the very top of their game. The troupe has been performing to sell-out crowds across the country for more than a decade.

As they take suggestions from the audience and turn them into wondrously funny routines, they trigger cascades of tumbling laughter. In a variety of dazzling impro games, the group possess an unparalleled ability to spin the audience’s propositions into comedy gold. The great thing is that every show is a new adventure.
Paul, who for the past thirty years has appeared every Sunday in London with the Comedy Store Players and in so doing has entered the Guinness Book of World Records for being part of the world’s longest-running comedy show with the same cast, is just as engaging in person as he is on stage.

The 57-year-old comedian, who has gained an immense following over 25 years as a team captain on BBC1’s widely loved topical news quiz, Have I Got News For You, adores live performing above else. He says he can’t wait to be back on stage. “It’s the most fun of all the mediums. There is no hiding place, no laughter track and no cutaways.
“People ask me why I do the Comedy Store Players and the Impro Chums, and the answer is that it keeps me match-fit. If I go away on holiday for two weeks, when I come back I find that everyone else has sped up ten per cent. It takes me until the interval to catch up and jump on the bus. There is such a thrill in the notion of playing, say, a Bulgarian lion-tamer trying to explain in fractured Spanish that the yoghurt in the fridge has gone off. It’s a complete delight!”

Paul, who last year published a highly successful autobiography, Only When I Laugh, goes on to expand on just why after all these years impro continues to give him such a rush. “I still get the same buzz as ever from doing it. Once the audience’s trust has been won and the laughter has started, you can really start to play. There is a tremendous thrill in seeing something completely unexpected unfold before you. You have taken a shouted-out suggestion, and it has turned into a brilliant scene. You have partly created it, and that’s really satisfying.”
The other excellent aspect of impro, Paul adds, is that every night is by its nature a total one-off. The comedian, who appears regularly on Radio 4’s Just a Minute, jokes that, “I feel I should say at the end of every show, ‘Don’t worry – this will never happen again!’”
Impro also keeps you honest, reckons Paul, who made his debut on C4’s Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1988. “If nobody’s laughing, you’re doing something wrong. You have to guard against complacency when you’re doing impro. In a learnt piece, you could fall into the trap of reciting your lines as you said them last night, but you can’t do that in impro. Every night is different, and that’s what keeps it so fresh.”  
  
Another reason why Paul Merton’s Impro Chums works so well is the effortless chemistry that exists between the five performers. “There is a shorthand between us,” explains Paul, who has made many very popular travel shows for Channel 5 on India, China and Europe.
A hugely knowledgeable film expert who has presented such documentaries as Paul Merton Looks at Alfred Hitchcock and Paul Merton’s Birth of Hollywood, Paul carries on that, “the key is that we all get on really well. If you have a situation where two members of an impro group aren’t getting on, it spills over into the work and every scene they do together quickly becomes an argument. So the familiarity of the Chums really helps the show.”   
When impro kicked off in a big way in the UK thirty-odd years ago, it was immediately so strong that some people at first refused to believe that it wasn’t scripted.
Paul, who enjoyed a huge hit at the Edinburgh Festival last summer co-starring with his wife Suki Webster in My Obsession, her new play described as “superb” by The List, recalls that, “A long, long time ago on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, some people thought it was fixed. But that idea was just silly. As improvisers, we all embark on sentences without knowing how they will end, but we hope to take them to entertaining heights.” So far, so good!

But perhaps the best thing of all about impro for Paul is that the performers don’t have to memorise a script. “We don’t have to learn any lines. We can do it all off the top of our heads, and that’s an absolute joy. I’m sorry, Mr Sondheim!”
Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, Concert Hall, Brighton Dome, £22/20,
01273 709709 , brightondome.org
Picture: Idil Sukan