‘I was a stuffed shirt, he was an oik’ – Ian Hislop and Paul Merton on making Have I Got News for You

‘My mother came along to the filming of the pilot episode – and afterwards she said, “Oh, never mind, darling”’

I’d just come out of Maudsley psychiatric hospital in London, because I’d had a very bad reaction to an anti-malarial drug, Larium. I’d gone on holiday to Kenya at the end of 1989. The daily drug was fine, but the weekly one gave me manic episodes. Every Friday I’d get very strange, but by Sunday it had worn off.

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