Paul Merton

Attributed

• "It's silly to make generalisations, but if you talk to anyone in the South for longer than five minutes, they will try to sell you fruit."

• "If you stay in a house and there is no toilet paper, you can always slide down the bannisters. Don't tell me you haven't tried 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?'"

• "Shakespeare hasn't done much in 500 years either. What's your contribution been, Robert? Say, in the last twenty years, when you weren't doing your show. When you weren't doing that crap show, what's your contribution been to society?
• (Kilroy Silk attempts to interrupt him) "Shut the fuck up!"
  • To Robert Kilroy Silk, who claimed that Arabs had contributed nothing to society in the last 500 years.

• "That must have been a rough school!"
  • A retort to the response of "Who are you looking at?" Glenda Jackson MP was asked what her school motto was.

• "His name is "Angus". The "G" is silent."

• "I think Iran and Iraq had a war simply because their names are so similar. They keep getting each other's post."

• "My hair's got a life of its own. Last week I found it in the kitchen, making an omelette."

• "There are various ways to give up smoking — nicotine patches, nicotine gum... my auntie used to pour a gallon of petrol over herself every morning."

• "My schooldays 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."

• "My aunt died at precisely 10.47am and the old grandfather clock stopped at precisely the same time also. It fell on her."

• To previous Room 101 host, Nick Hancock: "Are you familiar with the concept of Room 101?"

• Angus Deayton: "'I made Thatcher (what?),' boasts Nigel?" Paul Merton: "Swallow?"
  • On an episode of Have I Got News For You, in the "Missing Words" round.

• "Am I the only one who's always tempted to light the wick on top of a beret?"

• "Well, we stabbed him in the front, really."
  • On being questioned whether he and Hislop had stabbed Angus Deayton in the back regarding his dismissal from Have I Got News For You.

• "I have a professional reluctance to watch somebody laughing where there's no joke."
  • Watching laughter therapy on a beach in Chennai during the Paul Merton in India series.