That Nice Mrs Merton

For many viewers, The Mrs Merton Show sprang fully-formed onto BBC2 on the 10th February 1995. But things are never quite as simple as that. And with Caroline Aherne and Mrs Dorothy Merton, the story is even more complicated than most.

Regional television can get short shrift in the history of comedy; regional radio even more so. Very little in-depth has been written about the origins of Mrs Merton in Frank Sidebottom’s Piccadilly Radio shows, or her appearances on 90s Granada talk show Upfront. Even tracking down some of this material is hard, and perhaps impossible if you’re a completist.

For instance, it’s very much worth listening to the following extremely early Mrs Merton, on Key 103:

But when was it actually broadcast? There’s no TX date attached to it at all. It’s probably 1988 or 1989, but that’s all I can really figure out.

Once we get into the 90s, things become a little clearer; Frank Sidebottom’s Fantastic Shed Show, which also featured Mrs Merton, even got a DVD release. Still, the key pre-BBC2 texts are surely the two ITV pilots for her chat show: one unbroadcast, and one broadcast. The unbroadcast one, titled Mrs Murton’s Nightcap and made by Yorkshire in 1991, has never been officially released. It is, however, sitting nicely on YouTube, and is well worth a watch:

As for the second pilot? That was made by Granada in 1993, titled “That Nice Mrs Merton”, and was actually broadcast… but, crucially, not networked. It was only ever shown in the Granada and Border regions. Most people who tuned into The Mrs Merton Show on BBC2 not only would never have seen it; they never would have had the chance to see it.

Which makes it even more delightful that, against all odds, it was included in Network’s DVD release of The Mrs Merton Show in 2008. By this point, while the specifics are different, the bones of the show are pretty much there:

The framing of “That Nice Mrs Merton” on this DVD set is interesting. You’d think it would be shoved on the final disc, and listed as an extra. Instead, it’s right at the start of the very first disc, explicitly contextualising it as the “real” first episode of the show:

Yet there’s something odd about the DVD menu above. It clearly states that “That Nice Mrs Merton” was broadcast on the 5th December 1993. But if we look at the Manchester Evening News listings for Granada on that date, the show is nowhere to be found:

Hmmmmmm. But what’s this, the day after, on the 6th December?

Comic Timing, with Caroline Aherne? That sounds promising. And sure enough, if we check the promised TV preview, on the previous page:

“Agony aunt Mrs Merton has her own show in Comic Timing and is unleashed on three unexpected guests – Carol Thatcher, Terry Christian and TV doc Mark Porter. Mrs M – otherwise Manchester comedienne Caroline Aherne – asks her guests such questions as: Was Carol breast-fed? Which party does she vote for?

And how does Terry Christian cope with all that fame?”

So “That Nice Mrs Merton” was actually shown on the 6th December 1993, not the 5th. The DVD menu is incorrect. Leading, of course, to this incorrect information being plastered across the internet, not least on places like IMDB and Wikipedia.¹

*   *   *

As for Comic Timing itself, well, that’s a tale for another day. A set of Granada comedy pilots – the first series in 1992, and the second in 1993 – it remains essentially undocumented online. I really should do something about that.

The following does seem worth mentioning here, though. Out of all of those pilots, only one of them got a repeat in 1994. And that was… “That Nice Mrs Merton”, shown by Granada on the 5th December 1994.² The suspicious of you might note that the 5th December is also the date incorrectly stated on the DVD menu. Perhaps they bodged together the original TX and the repeat TX by mistake.

Regardless: that date is just two months before the full series of the show premiered on BBC2. Let’s now go back to the Manchester Evening News, on the 27th September 1994, and their Diary section:

“Move over Marje Proops and Clare Rayner – although she’s uncharacteristically quiet on the subject, I can reveal that Manchester funny girl Caroline Aherne is poised to become a TV agony aunt to the nation.

So far a phenomenon mainly in the Granada region, the blue-rinsed Mrs Merton, Caroline’s ever-so-sympathetic comic creation, has been signed up for a brand new series by BBC entertainment chief David Liddiment, who clearly made a note of her talent when former programmes’ chief at Granada Television.

The BBC2 show, based on the homespun thoughts and impeccable advice of Mrs M, will be another step up stardom’s ladder – though the petite blonde’s new hubby, rock wildman Peter Hook of New Order, will no doubt help her handle the pitfalls of fame.³

The 30-year-old from Northenden was unable to return my calls congratulating her on the good news. She must still be, I reckon, recovering from her summer wedding at the Elvis Presley Memorial Chapel in Las Vegas.

But a BBC insider tells me that the Beeb’s bespectacled entertainments’ boss has given the go-ahead for the new show, provisionally titled That Nice Mrs Merton.

‘Filming starts later this autumn, but the show won’t be seen until next year,” says my source. “But the project is still at a very early stage which is why we don’t have a date for transmission for it yet.'”

The point the above article misses out – perhaps because it’s only of interest to Dirty Feed readers, rather than Manchester’s paper of record – is that Granada was making the series for the BBC. Still, I find it interesting that Granada repeated the pilot on their own channel, when the series itself had already been commissioned for the Beeb.

I presume the Granada continuity announcer didn’t dare say the following:

“And there will be full series of Mrs Merton on BBC2 in the New Year…”

Oh well, I can dream.

With thanks to Darrell Maclaine and Mike Scott.

1. These may already be fixed by the time you read this, but they were incorrect when this article was published. ↩

2. It also got a Border repeat the subsequent week, on the 12th December 1994. It never got a network showing. ↩

3. I… you know what, forget it. ↩

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