Comedy thriller now in development

 Paul Merton has revealed that he is writing a comedy-thriller for the big screen.

The comedian divulged few details about the script, but did say it was now in development – and that it was an eye-opening experience writing a movie, for which he has no track record.

‘It's like starting again,’ he told the Radio Times: ‘I have no reputation or anything in film, so I've had rejection letters. But it's in development now. We'll have to wait and see."

He was speaking ahead of his four-part Radio 2 series about The Beatles, which starts on Monday.

Merton also spoke of his 27 years on Have I Got News For You, saying he still tried to ‘do the best I can do’

He said: ‘Nobody says I look tired or bored in Have I Got News For You - although yes I sometimes looked pissed off because of who I'm sitting next to.’

However, his assertion isn’t quite true. 

In a 2015 review of the topical news show, The Independent said: ‘Merton, in particular, looks bored to death, as though this is some kind of purgatory he finds himself stuck in’; in 2013 The Guardian said Merton ‘now spends about three quarters of every episode looking impossibly bored’ and The Spectator’s Roger Lewis has said of him: ‘When I watch him or listen to him he does seem thoroughly, almost agonisingly, bored.’

Published: 23 May 2017