who's the best?

Many years ago now I had a stat which worked out the percentage of games won by the players. It showed Paul Merton to be clearly the most successful at winning the game. My dear friend Keith Matthews disagreed, as he always did on JAM matters, passionately. His view was that while Clement Freud had the greatest number of wins, he would be JAM's supreme champion.

I mention this because Paul is now just one win behind Clement. I don't know if Keith would change his mind - he adored the old gang of four, although he of course enjoyed Paul too.

In the leadup to the 50th anniversary I have updated this stat. I did wonder if Paul may have been passed by Gyles Brandreth but as you can see, Paul is still the champ. And it's all but certain that in the next season Paul will also have the highest number of wins. I think that even if he was competing with Clement, Derek Nimmo and Kenneth Williams "in their pomp" Paul might well be top of this particular stat. (qualification is five games)

58.78% Paul Merton 231/393
55.56% Gyles Brandreth 60/108
51.72% Tony Slattery 15/29
51.61% Stephen Fry 16/31
44.33% Derek Nimmo 133/300
43.53% Clement Freud 232/533
40.15% Tony Hawks 55/137
40.00% Libby Purves 2/5
37.93% Marcus Brigstocke 11/29
36.67% Sue Perkins 22/60
36.36% Dale Winton 4/11
34.78% Josie Lawrence 16/46
33.33% Liza Goddard 2/6, Jean Marsh 2/6, Nicholas Parsons 3/9, John Sergeant 2/6
32.65% Tim Rice 16/49
29.73% Sheila Hancock 33/111
25.64% Ross Noble 10/39
25.42% Julian Clary 15/59
23.08% Wendy Richard 9/39
20.93% Kit Hesketh-Harvey 9/43
20.59% Aimi Macdonald 7/34
20.39% Graham Norton 21/103
20.00% Rufus Hound 1/5
19.29% Kenneth Williams 65/337
16.67% Martin Jarvis 1/6, Maureen Lipman 1/6, Richard Morton 1/6, Neil Mullarkey 1/6, Paul Sinha 1/6, Barry Took 1/6, Holly Walsh 1/6
16.41% Peter Jones 54/329
16.33% Andree Melly 8/49
15.28% Jenny Éclair 11/72
14.29% Pam Ayres 4/28, Miles Jupp 1/7, Alfred Marks 2/14, Maria McErlane 2/14, Richard Murdoch 1/7
12.50% Phill Jupitus 1/8, Russell Kane 1/8
11.11% Richard Herring 1/9, Richard Vranch 1/9
9.52% Alun Cochrane 2/21, Linda Smith 4/42
9.09% Steve Frost 2/22, Patrick Moore 1/11
8.33% Liza Tarbuck 3/36
8.00% Barry Cryer 2/25
6.67% Geraldine Jones 1/15
6.25% Shappi Khorsandi 1/16
5.56% Fred MacAulay 1/18
5.26% Charles Collingwood 1/19
0.00% Janet Brown 0/6, Susan Calman 0/5, Denise Coffey 0/6, Kevin Eldon 0/8, Graeme Garden
0/7, Janey Godley 0/9, Dave Gorman 0/5, Jeremy Hardy 0/6, John Junkin 0/8, Helen Lederer 0/6, Zoe Lyons 0/8, Stephen Mangan 0/7, Pauline McLynn 0/6, Chris Neill 0/24, Dara O’Briain 0/5, Lance Percival 0/7, Greg Proops 0/12, Arthur Smith 0/9, Jim Sweeney 0/5