Paul Merton Quotes

Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way.

Am I allowed to call myself working-class now? Because obviously I'm now very rich.

When I used to do the Edinburgh Festival, there was a bunch of guys selling fresh oysters and I'd eat ten daily - marvellous.

I was trying to organise my DVDs into a sort of chronological order, and I am afraid that it all trailed off after the Sixties.

I don't always vote in general elections, but I think I've always voted Labour.

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.

In 1987, I was in Edinburgh doing my first one-man show. I took part in a kickabout with some fellow comedians and tripped over my trousers and heard this cracking sound in my leg. A couple of days later I went into a coma and was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism.

If you stay in a house and you go to the bathroom and there is no toilet paper, you can always slide down the banisters. Don't tell me you haven't done it.

My favourite riposte to a heckle is to say, 'Excuse me, I'm trying to work here. How would you like it if I stood yelling down the alley while you're giving blow jobs to transsexuals?'

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.

I've never been disappointed by politicians. I've never invested that much in them in the first place.

It seems like a contradiction, but the shy person who is a performer actually does make sense, because in a way, when you're young and shy, making people laugh is a good way to make friends. It's an instant connection.

I remember being fascinated by the very nature of comedy from the age of 10; why is this funny, and that isn't?

When I was nine I spent a lot of my time reading books about the history of comedy, or listening to the Goons or Hancock, humour from previous generations.

In fact, I don't watch a lot of contemporary comedy for fear of being influenced by it.

I have never sold my story, done Hello! magazine, any of that stuff. I'm not guilty of exploiting my private life for cash and then saying, 'Oh, I don't want to talk about my private life.' I've never crossed that line.

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

All disc jockeys are without talent. Noel Edmonds - I can't stand Noel Edmonds.

I really don't take any interest at all in contemporary comedy.

On my first day in New York a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When I told him I didn't, he said: Do you mind if I mug you here?

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.

Have you ever had sex with a horse?