Shy children often go on to perform. For kids who struggle one to one, engaging with audiences can be less daunting than with individuals. That was me in my youth, although no longer. I was never the cheeky class clown. I cracked quiet jokes at the back, unbeknown to the authorities.
Clumsiness has plagued me since childhood. My earliest memory is at three years old, trapping my little finger in the gap of a door’s hinge. It was painful. I still feel a twitch when I think about it now. Avoiding obstacles is not my forte.
We were a working-class family: home was a London council flat. My mum was a nurse, Dad was a tube driver. I don’t suppose we had much, but it never felt as if we were poor – there was food on the table, coal fires in winter. No restaurant meals; all holidays at Butlin’s. Everyone I knew lived the same.
It still baffles me that Paul McCartney knows who I am. I’ve met him five times. The first time I couldn’t speak with nerves; all that came out of my mouth was nonsense. Most recently, after a preview screening of a documentary, he came up to me and started chatting away. I’ve learned to hold myself together.
Comedy was my plan from early on: aged five, at a circus, I became obsessed with entertaining. But those who came up slowly, I’d learned, often had more longevity. So I took my time. I did my first gig at London’s Comedy Store at 34. I’d spent six weeks writing a surreal bit about a policeman accidentally high on LSD. The crowd went wild. My dream? I’d done it.
It’s not a character I play on Have I Got News For You, but I embody a certain spiky or irreverent attitude. After 35 years of it, people are often surprised about how jovial and approachable I actually am.
A shared sense of humour is key to lasting relationships. Both my wife Suki [Webster] and I are comics; we crack jokes to cut through tension. And neither of us go off to a regular job – we spend so much time together day after day, and genuinely love to.
Heights are my greatest fear. It’s genuine vertigo – I panic and my legs go all wobbly. Doing panto last year, if I got too close to the stage’s edge, I’d worry about falling. I once tried to cure myself by climbing up the Whispering Gallery stairs at St Paul’s Cathedral. It went terribly.
Don’t be afraid to fail: that’s what decades of doing Just a Minute has taught me. It’s the mistakes in that show that make the fun. Everyone succeeding every time? How boring.
Take grief day by day, that’s my advice. Find your own way through it. When I’ve been in it, performing has been key. I can’t be miserable when on stage, making people laugh. Up there, sadness would fade away, if only briefly at first.
My school was at the top of a very steep hill. I once cycled down it on a friend’s bike but couldn’t work out the brakes. At speed, I went straight into the main road below – two lanes of busy traffic. A lorry missed me by a matter of feet. I whacked the curb and flew off in total shock, but was totally unharmed. I think about why fairly often.
Paul Merton & Suki Webster’s Improv Show is at the Comedy Store, London, on Wednesdays until 30 October (london.thecomedystore.co.uk)
