In a show business world where gossip and conjecture and rumour and tittle tattle can often reign supreme, Paul Merton may feel himself lucky to have got off relatively lightly. The most savage bit of whisper mongering he has encountered in recent years was the scandalous claims from one tabloid that he and Noel Edmonds were going head to head for the Countdown chair. 'It’s true that I was asked if I wanted to audition for it but I said no and then this piece appeared. I was amused by the notion and flattered by it, but the reality of that show is that they record five a day for three weeks and then you have a whole series for six months or whatever it is. The people who watch and play the game take it very seriously. Even if you could think of gags in the course of three weeks for six months of programming, you couldn't think of enough and the people who watch it don't want gags, they just want the quiz.'

I feel slightly guilty telling Merton that I have come from Edinburgh to meet him, with two sour experiences of the Fringe living vividly in his memory. In 1986 he was attacked while helping put up a friend's poster and the following year he found himself in a hospital bed after breaking a leg during a comedians' football game, eventually contracting hepatitis A. The reviews had been kind to him at that point but his premature Fringe burial meant taking a financial hit which he found tough to recover from.

He can just about see the funny side of such incidents now, which is fortunate as Merton has an appealing laugh, at one point along its trajectory hearty, at its extreme end almost bellowing. Not at anything that I have to say, mind you, but of the daft things he's encountered down his near three decades in the comedy business. Such as recalling one of the inspirations for his own early stand-up, Alexei Sayle, Merton saw him perform at London's Raymond Revue Bar at the dawn of the 1980s, with his tight suit on and his hat down over his eyes, 'doing this extraordinary thing he called the stream of tastelessness which was every single swear word you could think of just put into a sentence without any other words at all and getting faster and faster with this aggression and his Scouse attitude. It was hilarious.'

With perfectly valid reasons, people find Paul Merton hilarious. Even those who have had their fill of the long-running Have I Got News For You (later today, after our interview, something to eat and a quick nap, he's off recording more of the show's 35thseries) concede that the bamboozled surrealist shtick he's cultivated on the show to utter perfection is still enough to make them tune in from time to time. Meanwhile, hardcore fans will get all dewy-eyed when dragging up recollections of his Channel 4 affair Paul Merton: The Series, a sketch show which lasted two seasons in 1991 and 1993 and in that Fast Show/Newman & Baddielera of the sketch show catchphrase, the closest Merton got to his words rattling around the schoolyards or offices of the nation were 'innit marvellous?',the concluding remark uttered by his only regular character who, were this The Simpsons, would be called Newspaper Kiosk Guy.

Mr Merton and I have gathered together today in his management company's office in central London to chat about his latest venture as he goes back on the road with his Impro Chums. Although Merton's face fills the poster and the show title reminds us that we can spend time with Paul's pals, he is never less than gracious when talking about his fellow ad libbing colleagues, Suki Webster, Richard Vranch, Lee Simpson and Mike McShane who is replacing improvstalwart Jim Sweeney who is now too unwell with the multiple sclerosis he has suffered from since 1985 to carry on touring.

So, what is the main appeal of improvisational comedy to Merton? 'I compare it to the years when I did stand-up in the early to mid 80s. Bits of it were fun, the bits on stage, but when I'm sitting in some dressing room backstage at half time and hearing the buzz of hopefully excited people and I'm here on my own, I think 'why am I here on my own?' Compared to that there are five people on this tour and we travel around on a coach with each show being different every night; that’s a key thing. If you get an idea that you think is a funny idea, you don’t have to pitch it, you just do it and find out there and then if it’s funny. Normally it is, but if it isn't, then this person on stage with you will have a better idea and if they don't, then this other person will and it'll happen given time. This freedom to just come up with stuff and not have to take it to anybody or get a show of hands can be liberating.'

In the current climate of audiences wishing to be as much of a star as the genuinely famous (a cult which covers everything from X-Factor auditioning to comedy club heckling), a regular avenue for the public to gain a vicarious sense of fame is via the improvised stage act and the potentially dreaded 'audience suggestion.' Merton must have heard a few crackers in his time? 'The things that people write down in the dark under the cloak of anonymity can sometimes be quite scary. We might look at something and think 'we just can't do that'. If you ever see someone pick up a card and say 'I can't do that one', it's almost always on the grounds of taste. They might be homophobic, say, or there was the one where within a month of the London underground attacks, we had a card that said: 'travel on the underground with a rucksack stuffed with explosives'. Now, that's just not going to work and if we tried it we'd end up being booed for someone else's suggestion.'

Merton once told Melvyn Bragg that many people were unaware of his previous life as a stand-up comic and believed that he was 'born to sit behind a desk and make quips about the week's news.' Anyone who still believes that clearly hasn't seen him in his latest reincarnation as esteemed TV traveller, following in the footsteps of Michael Palin by heading off to very distant foreign soil accompanied by a camera crew and interpreters, being led on by an inquisitive eye and kept cheerful with a dry English wit. For Five, Merton has visited China and soon he will be viewed in the follow-up, heading to India for a gruelling two-month stay.

'From the crew's point of view, we got better material than the China series, but it was an intensive thing and I reached a level of exhaustion where I was getting chest infections and a bad stomach but since I've been back, I've mainly just been lying around.' Without putting too fine a point on it, did any of the Indian cuisine match up to the delicacies he savoured in China, such as the donkey penis? 'Nothing can compare to that. They tried me on sheep's brains fairly early on but some Indian food can be a bit ordinary and once in a while in a luxury hotel you find you’re going for something on the western menu or the Chinese menu to just have something different.'

Such programmes can only really work with a steady stream of oddballs and eccentrics falling into the presenter's path. In India, Merton struck gold. 'Inevitably your question leads me to BB Nayak, who holds the world record for receiving the highest consecutive kicks to his groin, which numbered 44. He'd picked out five people to kick him ten times each, but the fifth guy didn’t turn up. So we went down to see him and he asked me to kick him in the groin which I did with a steady rhythm; he congratulated me for my accuracy. Later that day, he established another world record at a local sports stadium by doing a series of cartwheels by using only the knuckles on one hand and he did 30 of those in a minute.'

Having passed his 50thbirthday last year, Merton is showing little sign of slowing down. Once the Impro Chums tour cranks out its final ad lib at the end of June, he'll be getting ready to direct and appear in a documentary for BBC4 about the British movies made by Alfred Hitchcock. 'Maybe I've changed physically, but I don't feel any different. I feel 30. But there were people I went to school with who when they were 16 were really 40 while there were people I worked with in the Tooting employment office like this 60-year-old guy who had the spirit of a 20-year-old, so it’s just how you feel really. There's a Dave Allen line that says it’s better than the alternative. I'm still pleased to be working and doing it.' And while he has his last laugh of the interview, the nation prepares to chuckle at the improvisational genius of Paul Merton and his fantastic foursome.

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Brian Donaldson
Freelance Writer