The South Bank Show: Paul Merton

The South Bank Show: Paul Merton
Channel Four
26 September 1999
Documentary
DVD
B

This isn't quite a biography but it does feature different points of a life, from a boyhood as Paul Martin to success as a comedian in the '90s.  If you want to know about Paul's (by then defunct) marriage to Caroline Quentin, you're out of luck, as there's just one sentence in passing.  However, we do see footage of him as a scruffy, bearded teen living on the dole, as well as a star in hit television programmes.  My favorite part was the taping of a Comedy Store Players session and the analysis by the team in a pub afterwards.  And Paul's honesty, including about his stay in a psychiatric hospital, is refreshing.  Note that Julian Clary appears not only in television clips but in an interview, where he indeed comes across as a good friend to Paul.

Room 101: Julian Clary

Room 101: Julian Clary
Channel Four
10 September 1999
Talk Show
DVD
C+

Although this has its moments, like Julian telling Paul, "You're wasted in the heterosexual world," I would expect something better from two comedians who had worked together for so long.  This was, incidentally, the final episode of the fourth series, the first Room 101 series to be hosted by Merton.

Whose Line Is It Anyway?: Episode 3.4

Julian next to Paul

Whose Line Is It Anyway?: Episode 3.4
Channel Four
8 February 1991
Improv Game Show
VHS
B-

Julian Clary, who had worked with Paul before*, does some games with him, including a priceless moment when Paul hesitates during Alphabet, clearly trying not to say "Queen" or "Queer," when we're all thinking it.  (You can hear Clive chuckling.)  Paul also devotes some of the second half of the episode to ruthlessly teasing a still infatuated if now understandably annoyed Josie.  Not only does he imply she's flat-chested in Props (she gets revenge on their next round), but his Expert Translation of her Swedish about Volvos opens with the question "Have you ever had sex with a horse?" and stays in that gutter.  Even during Gospel, he mocks her dancing, but then she looks very amused by his awful singing.  Note that, as a cab driver reading the closing credits, he says, "I've been married to three of them," and he was then newly married to his first of three wives, Caroline Quentin, who would appear on WLIIA later, but not with Paul.

No Mike/Paul, but Mike and Josie again play a married couple, in FATS.

*In fact, Paul's introduction on the Christmas episode says he's "responsible for some of Julian Clary's stickier moments," a reference to Julian's 1989-90 programme Sticky Moments, which Paul co-created.