"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?"
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Quote collection
Paul Merton quotes (page 1 of 2)
31 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"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?"
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"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.'"
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"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."
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"All disc jockeys are without talent. Noel Edmonds - I can't stand Noel Edmonds."
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"I remember being fascinated by the very nature of comedy from the age of 10; why is this funny, and that isn't?"
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"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."
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"I don't consider myself a fashion victim. I consider fashion a victim of me."
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"I don't always vote in general elections, but I think I've always voted Labour."
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"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."
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"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."
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"I've never been disappointed by politicians. I've never invested that much in them in the first place."
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"If you became a comedian in the '80s, you had to work the circuit and make people laugh. Canned laughter is cheating."
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"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."
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"In fact, I don't watch a lot of contemporary comedy for fear of being influenced by it."
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"And like the old stereotype, I overcame my shyness by making my friends laugh."
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