 over her breast-augmentation surgery. Merton chipped in with a gag about Yates giving herself black eyes while jogging, and, after Hislop refused to be derailed by Yates's pleas to 'be kind', Merton then continued the excruciating cross-examination by asking Yates whether she chose her new breasts from a booklet 'like wallpaper'. Today, Merton tells me he's unaware of the Yates documentary and seems surprised that I've brought it up. 'I don't think I was mean to her,' he says. 'I think I was supportive. I was rather surprised by Ian's anger. I think that certainly took her by surprise. She wasn't very journalistically rigorous and I suppose that's what was annoying Ian. Although it would be wrong for me to speak for him.' He says that Yates came to his dressing room after the recording. 'She was with Michael Hutchence at the time and I remember the two of them knocking on my dressing room door to say, 'Thank you for looking after me'.' Does Merton think they've been kinder to women since t){kind=link}
The comedian on working without a script, Boris Johnson – and accusations of sexist bullying levelled at the BBC panel show
“Are you old enough to remember newsflashes?” asks Paul Merton. At 66, the comedian has vivid memories of how “the nation would tense up when a card was held up to halt regular programmes. You knew something terrible was coming”.
But now we have 24-hour news channels, he knows that “many people feel relentlessly bombarded by awful things they can’t do anything about”. So he chalks up the surprise resurgence of Have I Got News for You – the BBC panel show on which he has regularly appeared since 1990 – largely to people watching HIGNFY “as a way to catch up [on current affairs] in a light-hearted context. Ian [Hislop] offers that forensic insight while I prefer to talk about singing parrots – a nice antidote to all the politics”.
But HIGNFY has had its unpleasant moments. This year, the all-male panel were accused of being “sexist bullies” when a Channel 4 documentary about the late Paula Yates reheated footage of the television presenter being mercilessly mocked (mostly by Hislop) over her breast-augmentation surgery. Merton chipped in with a gag about Yates giving herself black eyes while jogging, and, after Hislop refused to be derailed by Yates’s pleas to “be kind”, Merton then continued the excruciating cross-examination by asking Yates whether she chose her new breasts from a booklet “like wallpaper”.
Today, Merton tells me he’s unaware of the Yates documentary and seems surprised that I’ve brought it up. “I don’t think I was mean to her,” he says. “I think I was supportive. I was rather surprised by Ian’s anger. I think that certainly took her by surprise. She wasn’t very journalistically rigorous and I suppose that’s what was annoying Ian. Although it would be wrong for me to speak for him.” He says that Yates came to his dressing room after the recording. “She was with Michael Hutchence at the time and I remember the two of them knocking on my dressing room door to say, ‘Thank you for looking after me’.”