Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1993 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a comedian.

Born and brought up in South London he began his career at

tooting employment office. Undeterred, perhaps inspired by such surroundings, he

pursued his ambition to make people laugh and eventually became a stand-up comic at

London's comedy store. From there he graduated into radio and television. He now has

his own series on Channel 4, has appeared on Radio 4's I'm sorry I haven't a clue and just a minute,

and is part of the regular team on BBC 2's Have I Got News for You.

He once said that watching clowns at a circus when he was three years old decided him on his career.

I had, he says, no idea that adults could behave like that. He is Paul Merton.

So you've wanted to make people laugh as long as you can remember heavy poor?

Yes, I can't remember a time when I didn't.

When I was three or four years old, my games that I played on my own consisted of

perform into an audience, an invisible audience, you know, my

mother tells me, I can't really remember it when I was about two years old, she saw me in front

of the television with a Joe Loss orchestra was playing and I was standing there with knitten

needles that were conducted along, you know.

Are you used to practice your own autograph?

Yes, I thought that was something that everybody did until a few weeks ago.

But who made you laugh as a child?

I mean on the television or whatever.

...