Off the Cuff

“Quite a lot of stand-ups look down on improvised comedy, which I find amusing,” says Paul Merton, laughing.

Merton is unquestionably one of Britain’s best-loved comics. Having helped pull in upwards of 5 million viewers every week for more than twenty years on the hit BBC1 show Have I Got News for You, he is one of British comedy’s most recognisable faces.

But, unusually, Merton is one of very few big-name comics to have come out of the world of improvised comedy, an art-form often thought of as stand-up’s rather dim younger brother. As Merton himself says “this puts me in a sort of fairly unique position. I don’t think there are many other people who I know that are comedians who don’t do stand-up!”

But Merton wouldn't have it any other way. Having toured as a traditional comic only once—a period during which he says he “just got tired of listening to myself say the same thing every night, I wanted someone else to come on and to interact with”—he has spent the last twenty-five years touring and performing as part of an improv troupe. That is, of course, when he’s not been filming TV panel shows or building a reputation as a popular comedy historian.

The reason why some stand-ups view the art of improvisation with disdain, according to Merton, is because, as a performer, “you haven’t got the sweat, you haven’t got the nerves, you haven’t got the loneliness of stand-up.

“I haven’t needed to write a joke since 1992,” he laughs. “It’s playing, that’s what it is. Just sheer playing and that’s what’s very attractive about it. I remember when the Comedy Store Players [Merton’s first improv troupe] came up to Edinburgh in the early 1990s, playing at the Assembly Rooms, and we were surrounded by people who were nervously thinking about their shows, about their previews, about shifting around their material and about what worked and what didn’t. And for our first show, we didn’t even have a pen and paper! We had to borrow one from a member of the bar staff! I love that.”

Of course, Merton is being modest. I tell him that the very idea of going up on stage in front of hundreds of people with nothing prepared, no ideas and the very real threat of abject failure hanging precariously over my head would be too much to bear. 

“When I try to explain improv to people they say ‘well, that must be nerve-wracking’, but I say that there isn’t anything to be nervous about. The show doesn’t exist. Of course you have your structure, you have the same games but you change the personnel for each game and you are making it up as you go along. All you can do is, to the best of your ability, improvise as well as you can with good improvisers around you and thank God every time it does work. We do triumph and there aren’t terrible long pauses.”

Merton tells me about his early days as part of the Comedy Store Players, a troupe that included Mike Myers and Kit Hollerbach, two experienced improv hands. He tells me of how he used to watch Myers and Hollerbach “and thought ‘Well, this is impossible. How am I ever going to be able to do this?’ But of course like anything that’s difficult, the more you do it, the more you practise it and if you’ve got the facilities for it, you begin to get better.”

For Merton, the idea of performing alone is far more nerve-wracking. He says he enjoys the sociability of performing as part of a group, and that it relieves the burden of pressure from his shoulders. Indeed, it is the group dynamic that is so crucial to the success of improvised comedy. “It needs a trust, a level of internal trust and trust in those around you. We’ve never had a bad gig, because we’re not complacent about it. It’s about having the concentration, focus, being in the right frame of mind to do it, having lots of energy and making sure you’re listening to what’s going on around you. That’s one of the key things about improvising, listening to what other people are saying to you. It’s not just about talking.”

This year he is performing an ambitious 15-night run at the 750-seat Pleasance Grand with Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, a troupe that includes Richard Vranch, Suki Webster, Lee Simpson and Mike McShane.

They first got together during a tour of India in 2005: “A guy who had come to see the Comedy Store Players had liked it and thought that it would work in India,” explains Merton. “So we played all the major Indian cities, Dehli, Mumbai, Calcutta, and we did really well. And this was to a completely local audience. Not an expat audience at all. It was a middle-class Indian audience that came to see it. And they absolutely loved it. They were so enthusiastic. It was a really great experience. Then, when we got back, we thought ‘This was a joy to do, let’s take this on tour’. And I really love the joy of a new show every night.”

Judging by the flurry of five-star awards the Impro Chums have acquired already this August, it would appear that Merton’s not the only one in love with improvised comedy.