"I don’t think I’d have done comedy if I was born eighty years ago [...] I’d have been a lord. Shooting people that were on my land [...] With a wig, yeah. And some crisps."

"[When asked if he has a favorite woodland creature]"

"[When suggested he could have invented crisps] I couldn’t have invented crisps. [...] I don't really want to be known as the man who invented crisps. [...] I invented apples. [...] I invented pandas, and caps. I invented soil."

"I'd like to punch out a really old lady. There'd be no repercussions."

"I've always had my suspicions about moss."

"Nan, she died again, tragically. We decided to get her embalmed, we threw a bit of money at it. And the embalmer asked us if we had any photos of Nan that he could work from. But unfortunately, the only photo we had was of Nan on the log-flume at Alton Towers."

"You're probably like me, when your doorbell rings, your dog goes racing up to the door...but it's never for him, is it? "Who did you think it was going to be, one of your little friends?""

"I remember the shouts of "SCAB!" as my father went to work during the great dermatologists strike."

"I understand that there's a large party of Scottish people here tonight... [Silence] I'll kill that researcher!"

"Anyone got a van? [Silence] That's right, you never see them any more, do you, vans. Trying to spoil my DVD?"

"I've got a sister in Australia, so when I phone her up there is a slight delay on the line after I've spoken because she's a bit thick."

"The left side of the brain is responsible for speech, but then it would say that."

"Why is it only Tudor buildings we mock?"

"You know, he cries every time he sees a fossil, because he remembers it when it was running around. Thats how old he is!"

"He remembers when lizards were fish. Thats how old he is!"

"You know, he burned his first ever pair of shoes, because when he was a kid, the Earth was still hot. Thats how old he is!"

"He went down to Portsmouth once, to visit the Mary Rose, and was surprised to learn that it had sunk. Thats how old he is!"

"He went on Friends Reunited and Moses got back in touch with him. Thats how old he is!"

"Wot cher! all the neighbours cried, Who yer gonna meet, Bill, Have yer bought the street, Bill? Laugh! I thought I should've died, Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road."

"She wears a artful bonnet, feathers stuck upon it, Coverin' a fringe all curled; She's just about the sweetest, prettiest and neatest Doner in the wide, wide world! And she'll be Missis 'Awkins, Missis 'En'ry 'Awkins, Got 'er for to name the day; Settled it last Monday, so to church on Sunday, Off we trots the donkey shay!"

"We was as ’appy as could be that day Down at the Welsh ’Arp, which is ’Endon way."

"We've been together now for forty years, An' it don't seem a day too much, There ain't a lady livin' in the land As I'd "swop" for my dear old Dutch."

"Well as the vanquished charwoman of time begins to Shake-n-Vac the shagpile of eternity, I've noticed that we've just run out of time..."

"After tasting the meat pies, Samantha said she liked Mr Dewhurst’s beef in ale; although she preferred his tongue in cider."

"Coincidence is a wonderful thing."

"You think you can get away, but you can't. I'll follow you home and I'll shout jokes through your letterbox."

"My dad knew I was going to be a comedian. When I was a baby, he said, 'Is this a joke?"

"One musn't be misled by the amiable, bumbling persona. ... He is a toughly intelligent man moving confidently in any kind of surroundings from Windsor Castle to Birdland."

"I haven't spoken to my mother-in-law for 18 months. I don't like to interrupt her."

"So it turns out that if you bang two halves of a horse together, it doesn't make the sound of a coconut."

"Did you know that a laugh is something that comes out of a hole in your face? Anywhere else and you're in dead trouble!"

"I had an idyllic childhood and when my parents bought me a Punch and Judy Show and a ventriloquist's dummy, I'd perform anywhere, anytime. My parents were wonderful when I told them I wanted to be an entertainer."

"Comedy should never be over-analysed. It's either funny or it isn't. There's a subtle difference between those who say funny things and those who say things funny."

"Laughter is the greatest music in the world and audiences come to my shows to escape the cares of life. They don't want to be embarrassed or insulted. They want to laugh and so do I - which is probably why it works."

"I think it would a good idea now if all the ugly ones came and sat down near the front! You have! Good!"

"Radio personality, humorist, writer, cartoonist, ex-Guards officer and aristocrat – Humphrey Lyttelton’s status as one of Britain’s favourite all-rounders sometimes overshadowed his true stature as a jazz musician. But jazz was always his first, abiding love. In 1936, as an Eton schoolboy, he fell under the spell of Louis Armstrong, taught himself trumpet and formed a band. After World War II, he spearheaded Britain’s trad-jazz revival, though he was always more in it than of it. Bored by the purists’ dogmatic style, he broke ranks in 1953 by adding a non-trad saxophone to his group. At the concert, outraged zealots responded with the banner: ‘Go home, dirty bopper!’ But as the title of one of Lyttelton’s books put it, I play as I please; what pleased him was imaginative, swinging jazz with plenty of emotional energy. This was evident from the washboard whimsy of his early recordings and his jovial forays into calypso, to the jump-band vigour of the mid-1950s that evolved into the smooth, hard-driving mainstream which he continued to the end of his life. In a career spanning over six decades, till his death in 2008, he encouraged and inspired many of the most prominent jazz musicians in Britain."

"Television is like a great monster, eating your gags as fast as you say them."

"An interviewer had researched Lyttelton's other interests and asked him about "orthinology" (sic). Lyttelton said that he kept a straight face and answered the question but 24 hours later thought of what he should have replied: "Oh, you mean word-botching"."

"Now it's time to play a brand new game called Name That Barcode. Here's the first one: "Thick black, thin white, thick black, thick white, thick black, thin white." OK who's going to identify that?"

"[At an anti-vivisection demonstration] I went up to the ringleader, a tall, thin crusty with little braided beaded fussiness in his hair. 'I can't express to you all just how diametrically opposed I am to what you're saying. I mean, this sounds like a rhetorical figure, but it's not - I really mean this: I would genuinely go into any field and kill every single horse, cow, goat, sheep, dog, cat, rabbit, gerbil, if I honestly believed in my heart for just one moment, just one moment, that it might be a bit of a laugh.' By now, I had the fellow's Oxfam lapels in my fists. 'BECAUSE I AM SO BORED AND TIRED OF EVERYTHING SINCE SHE LEFT!!' Dropping my head onto his bony vegan shoulder, I sobbed loud and long, in great, wracking heaves and gasps. When I finally ceased and straightened up, my hands were full of small, plastic lapel-badges."

"That's you, that is"

"Never forget, she told the big brown eyes now fixed on her, it's not you but everything else around you that's wrong. If you feel all wrong you have every right to do so. It's not you it's all the rest of it. And if you feel things are weird it's because they are. After all, why else would you feel all wrong my son? No other reason in the world."

"I stared down at the cemetery and the sight felt rich, rewarding, physically so, in the actual eyes. The very eyeball itself felt good. I became the most recent person on earth to see that everyone in every single or double plot had known life in all its extremes. They had all known extreme pain and stress; all been overjoyed. All had been enchanted; and they'd all known extreme grief so bad they thought it must be meant for another species."

"George - don't do that."

"Nobody is safe. Deviate by a hair's-breadth from normal behaviour in her presence and you become a specimen in her collection. She has the ear to record every nuance of vour talk and the tongue to reproduce it."

"I was allowed to slave for them For ever and evermore. Oh, I was allowed to fetch and carry For my Three Brothers, Jim and Bob and Harry."

"Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as chaos."

"If I should go before the rest of you, Break not a flower, nor inscribe a stone, Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice, But be the usual selves That I have known."

"I don't understand Ethel. I don't, I don't really. She's one of my very best friends, Just about the best, nearly. She's an awfully nice girl, Ethel is, Dainty and refined, I mean she'd never do or say Anything unkind. But get her inside a stadium And she seems to go out of her mind."

"Stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor, Doing the military two-step, as in the days of yore."