Merton to examine comic heroes

Paul Merton is to host a four-part series on silent comedians for BBC Four.

The show, which starts on May 25 will explore the work of  Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and Harold Lloyd.

During Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns, the comic explains how it was Keaton who first inspired him to follow a career in comedy.

At the age of 13, he saw Keaton’s masterpiece The General and was hooked. ‘I loved every inch of it,’ he said. ‘The phenomenal timing, the ingenious gags and the sheer scale of the ambition.’

Eighty per cent of all silent films have been destroyed but, thanks to film restorers, every Keaton film survives today.

Until recently, one film, Hard Luck, was missing its ending – but in the course of his series Merton met Serge Bromberg from Paris-based Lobster Films who discovered and restored this vital footage, after 75 years.

Monty Python’s Terry Jones also appears in the series, explaining how Keaton  influenced his career. Talking of Steamboat Bill Jnr, Jones says: ‘It’s just beautiful to watch. I think with Keaton it was the realisation that comedy didn’t just have to be funny, it could be beautiful as well.’

Stuntman Vic Armstrong also speaks of his awe of the silent-era stunts, which he says were ‘far more dangerous than they are today’.

And he called the famous shot from Steamboat Bill Jnr in which a whole house front falls on Keaton – but an open upstairs window allows it to fall around him without injury ‘the birth of stunt work.’

Published: 6 May 2006