Quotes from Paul Merton

I read every book about Buster Keaton and Chaplin to see how they worked - it's all about dedication, tunnel vision, pursuit of perfection, getting the gag right.

I was flying to the Maldives in 2000 when the plane went through turbulence - after that, I didn't fly for four years. Then a job came up in India, so I did a simulator flight and learnt about what goes on in the cockpit. I'm fine now.

I never give anyone advice: it can backfire horribly. In the 1950s, Eric Morecambe told Ken Dodd to get his teeth fixed. But those teeth turned out to be one of Dodd's big selling points.

There's something magical about film, it's the ultimate for me, because it's kind of permanent - inasmuch as anything is. When I went to see Buster Keaton when I was about 14 and I came out of the cinema having really laughed at this film which had been made 50 years before, I thought: That's immortality. It's fantastic.

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.

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

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.

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.'

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

When things are difficult, awful, stressful, the thing that always gets you through is a sense of humour. I don't mean - well, maybe I do - laugh at the hangman as he puts the noose around your neck. But an eye, an ear, for the ridiculous, the absurd in life, can get you through a lot.

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?

I think having an outsider's viewpoint is interesting and good, especially for a comedian.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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?