Paul Merton says that comedy is like a muscle in that you have to keep using it. That’s why he loves playing around with impro, he tells CHARLES HUTCHINSON.

HAVE I got news for you: Paul Merton’s Impro Chums started in India.

“The parent group we sprang from, the Comedy Store Players, are celebrating their 30th year in October this year, but the Impro Chums shows didn’t start until 2004,” reveals Paul, who will be in York with chums Mike McShane, Lee Simpson, Richard Vranch and Suki Webster, his wife, at the Grand Opera House tomorrow night.

“There was this guy who had gone to the Edinburgh Fringe to find some stuff to promote in India but didn’t find anything he thought would work, but then came into the Comedy Store and thought ‘this will work’. It was a big call, but we went out there and we played to middle-class Indians on this stage we built at the end of a room in a hotel.

“What they found particularly amusing was our interpretation of things like Bollywood. We did that with enthusiasm and sincerity, so you get a few things right and plenty wrong, which they found hilarious, seeing their culture played back to them.”

Merton and chums have since taken their off-the-cuff, improvised comedy shows around Britain for a decade, “just doing what we all do as kids, playing endless, imaginative games”.

“As a child, you don’t need much,” says Paul, 57. “I remember as a young boy pushing a toy car up an armchair and suddenly it became a mountain. Kids often unpack a Christmas present and end up playing with the box. Impro is like playtime; the bit of school you liked. If you spark each other off in improvisation, it creates a really good spirit. It’s the spirit of the playground.”

That spirit has kept the group together through the years, with only one change in personnel that has seen Mike McShane take over from Jim Sweeney after Jim was struck by multiple sclerosis.

“I’ve been in shows where each scene is an argument but with Impro Chums, we all get on really well, which is so important and helps us to be on each other’s wavelength,” says Paul.

Life on the road is built around togetherness too. “We hire a big rock’n’roll converted coach with the 60 passenger seats taken out and beds put in, which means we can get home in relative comfort,” says Paul.

For those not familiar with the show’s format, it involves the Impro Chums taking shouted-out suggestions from the audience and turning them into comic routines, as well as playing improvised games.

“It’s always great fun to do and the audiences really enjoy the interaction, like when we ask them to write down suggestions at half time, which if they’re then used by us, they feel good about it,” says Paul.

“Doing these shows is adults’ play; we’ve been known to have water fights on stage, or play dolphins, so it can get very silly. That’s when you realise the spirit of it, performing with a group of like-minded people, where it’s amazing where you can go with it, whereas if it wasn’t improvised you could tell because there’d be a certain slickness or tiredness to it.”

Paul is back on the nation’s TV screens locking horns with fellow team captain Ian Hislop on BBC1’s Have I Got News For You, another long-running component of his career, which benefits from his Comedy Store work. “When it comes to doing a new series of Have I Got News For You, I feel match fit because of doing the Store shows; a little nervous but match fit,” he says.

“If I take a holiday for two weeks, I find everyone at the Store is ten per cent quicker than me, and it takes me until the interval to catch up and jump on the bus, as your humour is a muscle you have to keep using. But I’m very fortunate that the work I do doesn’t involve hard graft, with no scripts, no costumes, so there are no preparations needed.”

Away from his stage and TV commitments, Paul published his autobiography last year.

“The thing I realised when writing it was how much help you need from other people in what you do,” he says. “When I started on my own in a bedsit, you think you’ll do it with your own determination, but later you realise that without others’ help, it wouldn’t have happened.

“The book also gives you the chance to reflect how lucky you are to be doing three regular parts to your work: the radio [BBC Radio 4’s Just A Minute], the TV and the live stuff for 30 years. It’s incredible, when you think about it.”

• Paul Merton’s Impro Chums, Grand Opera House, York, tomorrow, 8pm; Leeds City Varieties, June 9, 8pm. Box office: York, 0844 871 3024 or atgtickets.com/york; Leeds, 0113 243 0808 or cityvarieties.co.uk

Did you know?

Paul Merton has appeared each Sunday in London with the Comedy Store Players for the past 30 years, entering the Guinness Book of World Records for being part of the world’s longest-running comedy show with the same cast.