The return of TV comic Paul Merton

Paul Merton holidayed in Ireland as a child. He visits again this week to perform his improv show at Vicar Street, says Richard Fitzpatrick.

PAUL Merton, one half of the BBC’s long-running satirical show, Have I Got News For You, returns to Ireland this week (May 3) to perform improvisational comedy at Vicar Street, with his troupe, Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, and his wife, Suki Webster.

Merton began visiting Ireland on childhood holidays from London’s suburbs. “My cousins live in Cork, just outside Monkstown. We used to come over for holidays, from the late 1960s onwards. I can still remember being ‘knocked out’ by seeing a train going down the middle of a road in Cork City.”