Have I Got News For You comedian Paul Merton has opened up about how he found love again six months after his ex-wife died of cancer.
Paul Merton met his third wife just six months after his second wife, Sarah Parkinson died of breast cancer(Image: GettyImages)
Beloved for his slapstick charm on Have I Got News For You, Paul Merton has long been celebrated as one of Britain’s top comedians. But behind the laughter, the comic has faced personal heartache, including the devastating loss of his second wife Sarah Parkinson in 2003.
Today he is happily married to fellow comedian Suki Webster, and has spoken candidly about how love returned to him more quickly than he could ever have expected, the Mirror reports. He shared: “I suppose this was about six or seven months [after Sarah’s death]. I don’t think it’s one of those decisions you can make. You see what happens.
“You’re not looking necessarily, because you have to grieve. But we were in India, we were on brandy and there was a magician in the dark. You don’t think anything except, this is great fun. You don’t think, ‘oh, is this right or wrong?’ It felt natural. It felt OK,” he continued.
Suki, who performs alongside Paul in the Comedy Store Players, added: “When you fall in love, you fall in love.”
The couple first met during a comedy troupe tour of India, when both were laying low after being struck by food poisoning. As they recovered, they found themselves in the garden of a dimly lit bar, sipping brandy and cokes while watching a magician perform.
Paul later joked that although the magician’s act left much to be desired, there was “magic in the air” between the two of them.
That was the beginning of a partnership, that has turned into over a decade of marriage and countless nights preforming together on stage. For Paul, Suki was an unexpected light at the end of the tunnel after a dark period in his life.
The comedian admitted he ‘wasn’t looking’ for love when he connected with Suki Webster(Image: Getty Images Europe)
His second wife Sarah Parkinson was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer before the pair tied the knot, and passed away just three months after their wedding. She was only 41 at the time.
Previously Paul had recalled how he found comfort in laughter following Sarahs death, attending a Comedy Store performance just six days later to experience shared joy with the audience. He explained: “It goes back to that thing about the release, the relief, it takes you somewhere else.”
Comedy has always been a part of Paul’s life, both as a career and as a source of stability during hard times. He was born Paul Martin, but took on the stage name Merton early in his career and broke through with Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1988.
Paul Merton found fame on Whose Line Is It Anyway? in 1988(Image: John Rogers/TV Times via Getty Images)
However, just as his career was taking off, the show was postponed and he had a mental breakdown which sent him to a psychiatric hospital in London for six weeks.
Despite the challenges he faced, he can still look back on that period of his life with a sense of humour, reflecting on how it felt to be someone who was struggling with very different issues from everyone else in the hospital, saying: “I was in a room for group therapy after breakfast every morning. There was somebody who had been kicked out of their council house.
“Somebody else said his daughter was heavily into drugs. All these terrible things were happening to them. My thing was that somebody had cancelled a television series. I never said that in the session, because I knew: “That’s awkward.” I still had a sense of proportion and a sense of humour about it,” he continued.
Thankfully things took a turn for the better for Merton as by 1990 he had become a household name in the UK, and the comedian has remained a fixture on Have I Got News For You ever since.
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