Deayton: Merton and I Got On Well

A fascinating interview was published last week in The Guardian with comedy actor and former Have I Got News For You host Angus Deayton.

Despite working almost non-stop since leaving the show (he appears in new BBC Three sitcom Pramface later this month), he still seems somewhat bitter about the affair which saw his former friends turn on him and happily have him replaced back in 2002.

Whether Deayton’s extra-marital exploits brought the show into disrepute or not is another matter; it seems that he was also taking criticism during the show from Hislop and Merton for pay packet that was the same size as their own…

‘For years I got stick for the amount I earned. I was often tempted to say, “If you cast your gaze to either side of me, there are others earning the same.”

Now by Paul Merton’s own admission, he and Hislop were instrumental in removing Deayton from his role on HIGNFY; he famously recalled on Parkinson that they had “stabbed him in the front”. So which one of them was it that would “wander in at four in the afternoon of that recording, and other people have been working on it for four days”?

Deayton isn’t saying,  but he is happy to reveal that despite appearances he always got on well with his co-stars, particularly Merton.

“Certainly Paul has rewritten history a bit in terms of our relationship. We were always the last ones out of the bar on a Thursday night. We were clapping each other on the back, saying how wonderful the show was. ‘A phenomenon – it’s a phenomenon,’ Paul always used to say. So, yeah, we always got on very well.”

It’s a fascinating interview, of which this is just the brief glimpse…