Stephen Merchant will 'almost certainly' do a stand-up tour

...as he drops hints he'd like to do Taskmaster

comedy Stephen Merchant has revealed he plans to tour – while throwing his hat into the ring to be a future Taskmaster contestant.

The Office co-creator said he ‘loved’ Alex Horne’s show and would ‘happily’ do it, adding: ‘Of all those sorts of shows, that's the one that looks both fun and incredibly frustrating.

‘I’d to think of myself as someone who can kind of think laterally, but I definitely can't.

‘If you stick me in an escape room... I mean, I was in an escape room once and, if it wasn't for my friend, I'd still be in there. I could not figure any of it out… So I don't know how I'd cope on Taskmaster, but I think I'd hopefully I'd be quite entertaining through my idiocy.’

His comments came in response to questions from James Gill and Tim Lewis on their Always Be Comedy podcast.

They also asked him about a return to stand-up – given that he hasn’t toured since Hello, Ladies in 2011.

Merchant has been making low-key appearances in clubs, including Always Be Comedy, and said he was enjoying being back on stage.

He told the podcast: ‘I probably did my first stand-up gig in, like, 1997, 1998, something like that. And I always dabbled with it, but I never quite settled into stand up.

‘When I first started it, I could never quite fully find my voice. I wasn't 100 per cent sure why I was up there.

‘But I always loved it, was always fascinated by it, and loved the challenge of it… the fact that you're writing the show with the audience, working with them.

‘It wasn't until I finally went back to it, having had some success, that I really got into the groove of it and started to enjoy it in the way real stand-ups do.

‘It feels like that it's the Kilimanjaro that you’ve got to go back to and try and climb again. ‘

He said he’d been enjoying the simplicity of stand-up compared with the machinery that goes into a TV production, and asked about whether he would go on tour he added: ‘Yes – almost certainly. Eventually.

‘It takes a long time for me to craft a stand-up act that I'm pleased with, partly because I've got these other things which pull me away to other projects. And just because I'm I want it to be as good as it can be.

‘If you ask me to write a sitcom, it might not be the greatest sitcom in the world, but I know I can write; it's got a beginning, middle and end, it has a story, it has a plot, it needs to do certain things, and the characters are sort of driving you forward, and the story's driving you forward, and easy to get done.

‘But with stand-up you can literally say anything about anything, and so therefore, I just find I throw a lot of shit at the wall to see what little bits stick and therefore it takes me a long time to nail it down.’

Merchant has most recently been working on season 3 of The Outlaws, which is expected to air on BBC One later this year..

• The Always Be Comedy podcast is available at www.alwaysbecomedy.com/podcast

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Published: 6 Mar 2024