Having conquered China, comedian Paul Merton has his sights set on India, an astonishingly diverse country of one billion people. Paul intends to beat his own path around this enormous subcontinent, shunning the traditional tourist spots in favour of unexpected sights and surprising detours, to see ‘his India’.
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Paul Merton in India. Video hosted on Youtube. Paul Merton in India is a television show broadcast on Five in the United Kingdom. The first episode was aired on 8 October 2008. It follows comedian Paul Merton as he travels around India. The series was commissioned after the success of the previous series Paul Merton in China. Merton travelled around various places in India (such as Delhi, and the Punjab), sampling various offbeat and out of the normal aspects of India.
* Episode 1: Delhi New series. The comedian embarks on a fascinating journey through India, shunning traditional tourist spots in favour of the surprising detours the enormous subcontinent has to offer. He visits Delhi, where he takes a course in etiquette before going for a ride on a stationary plane and finding out about the city's street monkeys.
* Episode 2: The Punjab The comedian meets dancing policemen in the Punjabi town of Bathinda and attends a cricket match for the blind in Delhi. He also visits a Jaipur clinic where prosthetic limbs are made, which helps around 20,000 people a year, and follows a gang of racketeering eunuchs in the town of Ahmedabad.
* Episode 3: EPISODE: 3 The comedian visits India's self-proclaimed capital of rock 'n' roll, situated in a remote part of Shillong in the far east of the country, as well as the Apne Aap community project housing the children of Kolkata's prostitutes. He also takes in the sights during a trip to the countryside in the state of Kerala.
* Episode 4: EPISODE: 4 The comedian visits Hyderabad to see the world's largest tricycle and meet some of the area's snake catchers. He also takes a trip to a Bangalore, where he visits a prison so well known for its excellent food that released prisoners ask to be sent back in, and watches a man try to set world records in skipping, thread-winding and disc throwing.
* Episode 5: EPISODE: 5 The comedian meets children who live in Mumbai's central station, and discovers the joys of 'Mollywood' cinema, the country's low-budget film industry which produces spoofs of some of India's more well-known movies. He also meets the man who holds the world record for being kicked in the groin the highest number of times in one session, and is invited to test the man's eye-watering endurance. Last in the series.
Following his recent successful series on China, crumpled national treasure Paul Merton turns his attention to India. At the start of the programme he declares that he wants to look beyond the familiar images of the subcontinent to find the weird and the wonderful – of which there should be plenty in a country with a population approaching one billion.
As soon as he arrives in Delhi, Merton plunges headlong into the teeming city in the back of a rickshaw. He makes a quick visit to a prestigious finishing school to perfect his local etiquette – including getting a mouthful of marbles to make his accent more understandable.
Paul subsequently travels on an airline that never leaves the ground, goes on patrol with Delhi’s elite monkey police and visits a temple in Rajasthan where rats are revered as sacred. Finally, he joins up to a million religious devotees at a Hindu festival in Gujarat.
After being invited into an ashram, Paul allows an old holy man to become his guru. However, he is alarmed when he meets his naked sect buddies and discovers that they can perform amazing feats of strength – with their todgers, no less. Witnessing a couple of scenes that will have male viewers wincing, Paul is uncharacteristically lost for words.
Perhaps to ease their discomfort, the guru’s disciples also smoke industrial amounts of dope to aid their quest for enlightenment, and our host is happier to throw himself into that part of the lifestyle. He goes on to get well mash-up — although, fortunately for everyone, not enough to start lifting concrete blocks with his knob.
Merton has an open approach and a genuine interest in the people and situations he encounters. However, he’s not as po-faced and earnest as Bruce Tribe Parry and his chin-rubbing ilk, and if something tickles his sense of the ridiculous he’ll happily – but gently – take the mick. This honest engagement is what makes the programme so enjoyable, and I’m sure Paul will take a large number of viewers with him on his journey.
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