comedians-from-england

"… I had to read [the script for the first episode of Flying Circus] several times in order to try and make some sense of it. The sketches ended strangely or sometimes didn't seem to end at all! Others had an odd beginning too. It certainly wasn't the sort of humour I was used to and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it all."

"One day, when we were doing a read-through, the boys realised they had forgotten to cast another male to be in a jungle sketch. Rather than make an urgent phone call, Michael suggested that I do it instead. It turned out to be one of my most enjoyable sketches, because it was so silly! I'm dressed exactly as they are, in khaki shorts and a pith helmet, with a huge moustache and speaking in a very low gravelly voice. There was no disguising I'm a female though, as I still have my lipstick and false eyelashes on. After that they often put me in men's roles!"

"Carol … was the unsung heroine because she was so spot on. We never had to tell her how to play a scene, she just had a Python way of thinking about it."

"When [the Pythons] discovered that I had a flair for comedy, the roles got more interesting. Michael … was always the one [to recommend me]; I think if it hadn't been for Michael, I probably always would have just been the glamour stooge."

"I was a great Lucille Ball fan. I did actually want to be Lucille Ball. Or Marilyn Monroe. I didn't care which."

"We didn't know who she was when we started the series. John Howard Davies cast her and we all liked her, so from then on, we used her for all but the more upper-class roles. We simply liked what she did; she was very easy to get along with, she could be very silly when required and she didn't have an excessive sense of dignity."

"... in many ways, the days of conservation are, sadly, a little bit numbered ... the point I'm trying to make is ... how much wildlife has decreased or, in some cases, completely disappeared. But, the only places where our wildlife is flourishing — and this is really, more or less, all over the world — are ... s ... Managing a reserve is really just on a big scale."

"If you report what you think is a , which actually turns out to be a funny robin, you can validly distract from your error by claiming that an aberrant robin is actually ornithologically more intriguing than a Red-flanked Bluetail."

"The truth is, every single British reptile is somewhere in . ... They call 'em the big six. Actually, it's the fairly small, slithery six. ... It's , , s ..., (which is, in fact, a lizard) — there are two real lizards ... ... and ... ..."

"I could sit and watch this sort of thing for ages — and, in fact, I do. Absolute routine — having had my breakfast down the road maybe. It's come back here, feed the birds ... and just take half an hour, often with a camera ..."

"… 84% of people in England and Wales want foxhunting to remain illegal. That’s the kind of public support most politicians only dream of. Rather than pandering to a vocal minority who want to return Britain to the dark ages of animal cruelty “for fun”, we call on all politicians not only to reject any repeal, weakening or substitution of the but also to support its strengthening and its better enforcement."

"Anyone who has witnessed Bill Oddie’s passion for nature, or watched the personable and wonderfully erudite wildlife presenter in action, might be forgiven for thinking that he could never really have been anything else. But such a role was not the natural end of a career that began with comedy sketches in a university amateur drama club. While most young people will recognise Oddie from such well-loved programmes as the BBC’s ' and ', his career is really a tale of two halves, and “the comedy years”, as he laughingly refers to them, made up a considerable period of his life. He was at Cambridge at the same time as and , and later become part of the comedy trio ‘’, whose humorous sketches delighted audiences throughout the 70s."

"... a hundred and fifty s — that is not natural ... Very little is this garden is actually you know, on any grand scale, natural. But it is friendly."

"They say men can never understand the pain of childbirth. Well, they can if you hit them in the testicles with a cricket bat for 14 hours."

"I was in my late twenties when I told my mother. [...] I spoke to her about an affair with a woman and three days later she had this stroke."

"[On mortality] If you are a Jew, and I am, it is not a subject that is ever far away. The Holocaust, in which I lost no one I knew, scarred me forever. And my life is informed by knowledge of it. I'm a jolly little soul but at the back of the jollity there is a knowledge of despair."

"I now regret it because it caused the person I loved the most pain she could not bear. I should have been aware that to tell her was very wrong. It also hurts me that she was not then able to live to see my success."

"The umbilical cord was never completely cut, metaphorically speaking, so I still feel massively connected to them long after their deaths. But I also happen to think that being an only child is inevitably damaging in some way because it too intensely focuses you on your parents and deprives young people of the socialising they must experience in order to fruit properly. I was terribly anxious to make friends; and I'm still needing people rather more than I should be, even at this advanced age."

"Nobody thinks they've had the career they deserve. And I want to be as important as Judi and Maggie and all the others, you know. And I think I'm bloody good — but nobody else agrees with me."

"[On the TV series Miriam's Big Fat Adventure] I've always been fat and you're not supposed to be fat, so my built-in rebellion starts with the very flesh that I inhabit."

"For 11 years they must have had intercourse but never complete[ly], but in the air raid, in the heat of the terror, I was created."

"I was groped by my childhood hero. I watched soap operas religiously and loved one well-known soap star, but he touched me up during my first ever rep job. He stroked my bum in the canteen queue and went, "Mmm, nice arse." The next day, I saw him in the corridor and wanted to bolt. Instead, I grabbed his crotch, and said, "Mmm, nice bollocks." He never spoke to me again. Quite awkward because we were in a play together."

"[I]t shot this two-day rape scene with a young actress and then they cut it. [...] I was in favour of them never having that rape scene but the fact she had to go through that and then the director went: "Actually I have decided I will cut it", as if he was the big hero. This kind of thing has to stop. But unfortunately you look at Netflix and you see the amount of violence against women in a lot of shows and you see we still have a long way to go."

"My first TV job asked me shave my legs and I refused. The cameras all zoomed in on my leg hairs and the 40-strong male crew treated me to a rendition of "Gillette, the best a man can get". I unfortunately bumped into Jim Davidson in the corridor and he shouted "Not only has she got hairy legs, she's wearing men's shoes!” as he pointed at my Doc Martens."

"[His eponymous role in Hancock's Half Hour wasn't] a character I put on and off like a coat. It's a part of me and a part of everybody I see."

"I wouldn't expect happiness. I don’t. I don’t think it is possible. But I'm very fortunate to be able to work in something that I like... The only happiness I could achieve would be to perfect the talent I have, however small it may be ... and if such a time came when I found that I had come to the end of what I could develop out of my own ability, limited however it may be, then I wouldn’t want to do it anymore."

"Robert Luff was a powerful, articulate businessman, bald-headed, very smart, about 50 to 60 years old, and he had all these shows on, all over Britain, including The Black and White Minstrel Show, which at that stage was making him a fortune."

"Traditionally, television audiences have always been massively white, because it tends to be organisations such as the British Legion who apply for tickets, and black people have never felt as though they belonged in clubs like that. It was only when I went along to the BBC ticket unit and suggested that my stuff might appeal to people who hang out in social clubs in Brixton and Willesden that anyone thought about the imbalance. It wasn't particularly racist — it just hadn't occurred to anyone before."

"At first I thought it was really funny, but the warning bells went off when I saw the first publicity poster for it. It was a picture of me with one of the minstrels and I'm wiping the black off his face and he's pretending to wipe the black off my face."

"Powell's offering us £1,000 to go home. I'll take the money: the train fare's only 10 quid from here to Dudley."

"In retrospect you look back and think, "Why didn't anybody say anything?" My brother Seymour, who's incredibly militant, used to make these jokes about storming on stage in a black beret and black gloves."

"The fine constitutional principles we have inherited from Magna Carta and parliament started off as the mere rhetorical perfume the barons doused themselves in to cover the stench of their own treachery. ... Fondness may be a more appropriate thing to feel about them than pride."

"Their certainty that they were right is worth remembering because it means there's probably stuff we're certain is right that future ages will correctly judge to be monstrous. The fact that everybody is convinced of something is no guarantee that it isn't evil horseshit."

"Trusting the state doesn't make it more trustworthy."

"Once a line of succession becomes open to different interpretations, it has ceased to function."

"I doubt religion is responsible for as much death as is claimed. Some people love to fight and steal and dominate – that's the key. There are arseholes among us and, given half a chance, they're going to start some sort of trouble out of ruthless self-interest or bloodlust or both. The prevailing ethos of any surrounding society is almost always that you're not supposed to kill people without a good reason, or at least some sort of reason. But the arseholes are clever, so they come up with reasons. To deeply religious societies, religious differences sound like a very convincing reason to kill people. But that doesn't mean the killing wouldn't have been happening anyway."

"The world has never been fair, and cannot be made fair, and claims that it can are foolish or dishonest. It can be made fairer and attempts to make it less fair can be resisted. Optimistic realists seek improvement, not perfection."

"Dying was by far the most astute and successful thing King John did in his entire reign."

"Ever since the days of old the Navy's ruled the waves. For years they've told the world that Britain's never shall be slaves. The Navy still remembers and you'll often hear them say What Nelson told Napoleon upon Trafalgar day:"It serves you right, you shouldn't have joined, it jolly well serves you right. It serves you right, you shouldn't have joined, you might have been sitting tight You might have been in Civvy Street instead of in the fight But it serves you right, you shouldn't have joined, it jolly well serves you right""

"I got divorced. I've got friends who got divorced and they did not do stand up – good to know it's not obligatory, but I think you have to do something. Some people drink and some people sleep around, and I was like, "I'm going to tell some strangers how sad I am. But in a funny way"."

"[Q:] What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? [A:] I'm always a bit late, but I don't mind that, because it means that whoever I'm meeting is already there. [Q:] What is the trait you most deplore in others? [A:] I hate it when people are later than me."

"I always wanted to be able to say I pay my electricity bill by telling cock jokes."

"[Asked "End of weekend dread?"] Monday is our Saturday, so no dread. Having different days off to the majority of people is great in so many ways. And working Saturdays means you never have to go to a wedding."

"[Asked if she was bullied at school] I was never punched. I think verbal abuse is potentially worse than being punched in the arm. I got called names every day. I got called Norma-No-Mates and Speccy-Four-Eyes."

"[Her] comedy depends on the cognitive dissonance between her appearance (primary school teacher in spectacles) and the filth she speaks."

"[Following on from the Telegraph quotation above] It's a wonderful place to work in and I'm seriously thinking of going back for good. We played to segregated audiences throughout the tour and experienced no racial difficulties at all."

"Britain is in a right mess, and I'm thinking of quitting. The scene in South Africa is great, just great."

"I want to leave England because I'm not going to be messed around by Communists and left-wing socialists. South Africa is a beautiful country ... It is an organised country, organised by English people."

"John rings. He’s been away in the country for the weekend. Has just returned to find a message that Graham has had a nervous breakdown."

"Dropped in to see Graham in Southwood Lane. He came out of hospital yesterday and is not supposed to drink ever again. He looked sallow and tense. It’s going to be a great struggle for him. Barry Cryer was there too. We sat and sipped tea and Barry and I joked rather forcibly. It seemed the only thing to do at the time."