Highly under-rated comic from the Northwest. A regular on Ch 5 and veteran of BBC 1 The Stand Up Show, and Saturday Live. Also a member of The Comedy Store's excellent Cutting Edge Team. Has been on excellent form of late and on his last appearence at the Glee Club took the roof off.

Paul Thorne was born in a Fish and Chip Shop in Warrington, Cheshire (a town between Liverpool and Manchester famous for its shops and ring-road). He had a fairly unremarkable childhood although, as the son of fish friers. he had no shortage of friends at Primary School:
"I think the other kids in the playground were drawn to me by the smell of salt and vinegar and they used to follow me home and get free batter scratchings off my mum while I copied their homework"

Did living in such a traditional sector of the catering industry effect him in any way?
"It certainly was a strange environment to grow up in, we opened at night so I got to stay up late and watch all these quirky characters and pissed people who used to make me laugh uncontrollably...it was a bit of a shock later in life to find out that I was related to some of them..........generally though it has stood me in good stead in some ways.......I know a good potato when I see one and I feel very at home amongst wet fish."

Paul scraped his way through school with average results and very bad end of term reports about not trying hard enough and "playing to the gallery" during lessons.

"The popular misconception about comedians is that they were all bullied at school and learned to be quick-witted in order to survive. Personally I think that's bollocks...I was never bullied at school...although I did used to make extra pocket money writing jokes for the kids that were"

His first exposure to stand-up came by accident on a Saturday afternoon shoplifting spree.
"I used to nick records from record shops in the town centre but I think they got wise and started just displaying the sleeves. In the end the only things on display were comedy albums. I ended up with three or four Billy Connolly recordings which I could only listen to secretly when my parents were out because of the bad language"
Paul eventually left his home town to do a degree in Geography in Kingston upon Thames which, he is quick to add, was more an excuse to live near a big city than from any desire to learn about coastal erosion.

"Like most people I think I've forgotten everything I learned on the course although every so often when I 'm in the car with other comics I do get these weird flash-backs ad suddenly blurt out 'Look everyone! An ox-bow lake!'
After three years and armed with a degree certificate and a substantial overdraft he left for Spain to work as an English teacher. Where he learned to play Flamenco guitar, dividing his time between teaching and practising and performing in the evenings.

"This troop of musicians and dancers sort of adopted me and let me rehearse with them. I think they found me a bit of a novelty. This English bloke unintentionally murdering their art form. In the end I stopped going when I realised they were clapping at me and not with me! "
On his return to Britain and bored with teaching Paul eventually stumbled into trying out comedy at the Edinburgh Festival.

"Me and a mate were in this place called the Fringe Club which was famous for being a bear pit where they used to boo people off or throw paper planes at them. Anyway, all the acts were going down really well so he bet me a tenner I wouldn't go on and pretend to be a comic, be really crap and then we could experience the full wrath of the audience . I really needed the money so I did it. Trouble was the audience were really nice and supportive so it back-fired and I went down well! Still haven't had the ten quid either!"
With one success under his belt the next step was doing try-outs at established clubs in London with varying degrees of success.

"I was so naive. I thought comedy was just an exercise in crowd control like teaching! I used to tear into the audience as a sort of pre-emptive strike and couldn't understand why it didn't always work. In the end it occured to me that people don't laugh much when they're scared."
Now, as an established act Paul has worked all over Britain and as far afield as Holland, Belgium Canada and Hong Kong, done his own one-man show at the Edinburgh festival and supported Lee Hurst on three nationwide tours. He is the regular audience warm-up for Rory Bremner and has appeared regularly on T.V. and Radio. In addition to this he has a resident slot as a member of the Comedy Store's Cutting Edge team who perform a topical show there every Tuesday night.
It's one of the best jobs in the world. The novelty never wears off, especially of not having to get out of bed in the morning.I'd love to still be doing it when I'm 55 like Billy Connolly, perform in theatres even have a couple of albums out. I'd make sure they took them out of the sleeves in the shop though.