English Quotes

I think I'm in the same mood as ever, but in some ways more mature. I guess you could say that, at 65, when you've seen the world shape up as I have, there are only two things you can do: laugh or kill yourself.

I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.

History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs.

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.

There's things that I couldn't joke about but other people could.

The tragedy for comedians is there's nothing more they want than to be liked. We desperately seek approval. It's almost like a personality disorder you can do as a job.

The first few weeks of joining Weight Watchers, you're just finding your feet.

The bigger the audience, the better with comedy.

Staying in luxury hotels still gives me a kick, especially Oulton Hall in Yorkshire. I'd stay in a hotel for the breakfast and room service.

More people are going out to comedy shows than they were before.

It's so clear cut with a comedian - you have that reflex action, whereby you laugh or you don't. And so you either love us or you simply cannot see why people are laughing.

It is such a social thing, laughing. Two thousand people in a room laughing is such a great buzz and they tend to laugh much more in a group.

If I'm at home for the weekend - and that is almost never - I tend to get twitchy at about eight o'clock in the evening because my body clock is timed to go on stage. I don't know what to do with myself.

I'm obsessed with TV. How wrong our parents were when they said we should only watch an hour a day. Stop wasting your time reading books.

I was in the South of France. I saw a Brownie on a school trip. She was holding up a book. It said on the front 'rough guide'. I thought: 'Yeah' she's not a looker.

I was a Christian. I didn't want to have sex before marriage, I was a bit uptight and not very self-confident. I was a virgin until I was 26.

I think the idea that death is not the end, that your dog's just gone to live on the farm, is limiting. Thoughts like that prevent you from making the most of the time that you have.

I like to write a joke without any fat on it.The shorter the better. I cater for people with ADD, basically.

I go around the country and do a simple gag like, 'The property ladder is now a snake' and get a real laugh.

I don't think it's any coincidence that I lost my religious faith and 'manned up' in the same year. I was described somewhere as a lapsed Catholic, which is funny because I'm not going back! I want to achieve things rather than live life in an animalistic way.

I don't see myself as offending people.

I am trying to release endorphins here. I am not preaching to you - I am trying to make you laugh.

Even if you're doing the national insurance awards, there's still that excitement when you wonder who is going to win, er, best premiums.

As soon as I did my first five minutes of stand-up I knew that I would rather be a failure at comedy than a success in marketing.

After a gig I always head back to the hotel, remembering granny's words of wisdom. I cancel the late-night pizza and watch the Jonathan Ross show instead.