Comedians From England

"No ones been up that high!"

"I'm just sayin', I don't like fun"

"I could eat a knob at night."

"(On Ricky asking him to do a diary next year)No I wouldn't, you know, cos you do the same stuff ever year don't ya? It's set up the same way: January, February it's the same thing, it's the same routine"

"It's just easier to put stuff off once we've got this calendar, whereas if we didnt have a date you'd have to do everythin' straight away"

"But hummus. When did that happen?...but there's a restaurant down the road that that's all they do. That is isn't a proper meal, that's a side-order innit? That's like having a restaurant just floggin' tomato ketchup. Hummus isn't a meal. They don't even try and kid ya to get you in to flog you just hummus, they actually say Oh it's hummus today. Not gonna work, they shut down within a month."

"I find that if you just talk, your mouth comes up with stuff."

"Hypothetical: Shipwrecked and eating a penis- ...I'll look for something else. We're surrounded by water. Why are we eating knob?"

"If you don't sleep you get run down. Sloths never get a flu, cos its good innit thats when your body's replemishing"

"Say if I was in charge and someone said that buildin' needs knockin' down, it's dangerous, if we didn't have a calendar we'd go 'erm let's do it now then.' Whereas cos we've got a calendar it's easy to say...'next Wednesday'"

"As long as you're rememberin' baby Jesus, does it matter when you're rememberin' 'im[Karl on how he hates Christmas being the same date each year]"

"I wouldn't put a date on that pancake day anyway, just av 'em when you want, have it when you want. There's no big deal. You've got to make 'em yourself, it's not like some place is openin' to do it. Have em when you want. I don't know why that's got a special day on it,sick-of-it"

"Why is it alright to be going around, going mental with a gun, shooting all the monkeys and killing them? Because one day we're going to run out."

"That's what I'm saying about Christmas, I might not be in the mood for it; December 25th"

"So you're sayin that it's easy to send somat up to space, but you don't believe there's a little banana machine?"

"Yeh I know but, I remember one on our estate, right. And she was a bit... what's the word that you can use cos I don't want to offend anyone? I'd say mental... but sort of mental homeless, is that a term?"

"You can be an ugly baby and everyone goes awww innit nice? There was some women in a cafe the other week that I was sat in, and she came up and she sat down with her mate and she was talkin' loudly goin' on about oh the baby's lovely. They said it's got, er, lovely big eyes, er, really big hands and feet. Now that doesn't sound like a nice baby to me. I felt like sayin' it sounds like a frog. But I thought I dont know her, there's only so much you can say to a stranger. I dont know what kept me from sayin' it."

"Turns out it was another load of monkeys from another part of the island...from the rough bit..."

"Where you are is what you eat. When I'm in London I'll have beans on toast for lunch. On holiday — what? Tapas? Go on then I'll have a bit. You eat whatevers in that area."

"Israel is the Jimmy Saville of nation states."

"[On Jeremy Corbyn] I'm very excited by Jeremy's rise [...] Although you can see all the forces of evil and their lies being deployed against him. People say he's brought 1970s-style socialism back, but those left-wingers were dicks. I was never very keen on Tony Benn, a pompous, self-important man. And Derek Hatton and Eric Heffer – awful, vile people. Jeremy is nothing like them. He's ascetic and morally incorruptible. The propaganda that's thrown against him is disgraceful. Until he appeared, you had to vote for one kind of Oxbridge twat or another, people who all go to the same dinner parties, people like the Ed Ballses and George Osbornes. Jeremy has shown that, within a democratic tradition, other things are possible."

"To me history as taught at school was like all those memories of galleries, castles and historic monuments that I didn't have. There was the same sense that if there was only some matrix, some philosophical framework to which I could attach all these facts then they would all make sense and they would all stay with me. And then halfway through Marx's Wages, Prices and Profits I suddenly thought to myself, 'Fuck me! This shit is actually true.' ... Once you understood Marx all the apparent chaos of human existence resolved itself into a coherent and comprehensive pattern. People fought not because they differed about how to wear a shirt but because they represented economic classes whose interests conflicted. The Cavaliers were landed aristocrats and their allies who wanted to hang on to a way of life being superseded by Cromwell's merchant class. Slavery was abolished not out of some idea 'niceness' in the Northern states but because the industrial factory owners of Chicago and Detroit wanted the blacks to work in their factories, to be 'wage slaves' rather than actual slaves, though often the improvement in their physical conditions was marginal. The British Empire wasn't some project designed to bring enlightenment to ignorant savages, but rather a brutal and rapacious exploitation of peoples who were often more humane than us. You can imagine, armed with this philosophy, how full of myself I now became. Even when I hadn't had the secret of human history in my grasp I had been a mouthy little bastard in class. Now I was unstoppable."

"[On Jeremy Corbyn] It is extraordinary. It is an amazing thing to have someone leading a major party who is personally a decent person. I know him a bit as we are both patrons of Palestinian solidarity campaigns. I have known him over the years and the forces that have coalesced around Jeremy are forces of good."

"[On his early "comic persona of an angry man in a too tight suit"] I do feel very proud of that, as we did banish racism and sexism from light entertainment."

"The comedian Alexei Sayle's 24 July 2014 interview on BBC Radio Two [with Jeremy Vine] was a strong example of the demonisation of those expressing concern at antisemitism: in this case, directed against Emma Barnett of The Daily Telegraph who had written a heartfelt article expressing her sincere fears. Sayle and Barnett [also interviewed by Vine] are both Jewish. Sayle called Barnett a "pro-Israel propagandist" who was using antisemitism "to discredit the entire Palestinian cause." After interventions he did acknowledge "there are idiots out there who will be antisemitic," before then saying "I hate Jihadists ... Muslim fundamentalism ... Israeli fundamentalism. And that's what Emma Barnett is supporting ... the murder of children. The murder of women. That's what she’s supporting. From a fascist, Zionist ideology. And that’s what this article is. It's just propaganda." Barnett ended by telling Sayle to get a lawyer and thanked him "for proving my exact point.""

"[on global warming] There's a group of people who, a little while ago, were saying, "It's not happening." That same group of people are now saying, "Alright, it is happening, but it's not our fault." That's a very dodgy position to be in. That's like saying, "I'm not having an affair, and, anyway, she seduced me"."

"I don't like David Blaine, he is the ultimate git wizard."

"Would you like the oldest, most historically significant athletic competition the world has ever known, attracting athletes from every known nation on the face of the planet to come here and perform at the peak of their abilities, in the very city where you live? Most British people go, "Where will we park?!""

"[On David Cameron] When I heard this inherited multi-million ex-Etonian talking about a culture of entitlement, well, I'm sorry, but my irony meter went through the red and then exploded in a gale of bitter laughter. It actually went "HAA!" I was furious, because I've only just had a new irony meter installed after Rebekah Brooks complained about how she had been unfairly reported by the British press."

"All big cities are the same now. It used to be easier at weekends. Not anymore, you get the white stretch limos everywhere. You see them at first, you think, "Is it a celebrity or a foreign dignitary?" No, its some slags. No one's sure how many slags, cause the windows are tinted. All you can say with any real degree of accuracy is that there is an indescriminate number of slags in said vehicle. There's at least two poking out the sunroof."

"We humans who art on Earth, humanity is special, our kingdom has come. Do what we innately know to be right, on Earth because that's all there is. Share the bread we have, try not to screw up. When others screw up, understand. We can't have everything that tempts us (Unless we work in international finance). Deliver ourselves from evil because this is it. The Earth, the power to do right, and the glory that will come if we do is ours, now and forever. Hu-man."

"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

"Q: Who were your comedic or revue influences? IC: I adored Jack Buchanan and Fred Astaire. Cary Grant roles are ones I would love to have played but I was never given any."

"He had great zest for life, and a lot of style - he belonged to an age of elegance."

"He had that love of life and love of people; he gathered people around him like other people gather butterflies or postage stamps."

"[[w:Robert Hamer|[Robert] Hamer]] was an alcoholic. And Hal Chester, the little volatile American producer of School for Scoundrels, looked after him like a child. He picked him up in the morning and took him to the studio, he looked after him at lunchtime, he took him home at night. And everything was hunky dory. He was compos mentis and played well [until] the last fortnight of shooting. It was a night shoot outside the Camelia room ... [a]nd I got down there and he was stoned out of his mind. He was absolutely rolling around, couldn't do a thing. So I'm afraid he had to be removed, and the producer directed that night. Then after that, for the last three weeks, another director came in who never got a credit, a man called Cyril Frankel, who I was in the army with, strangely. He directed the last three weeks. Of course, you've always got to remember that everything is shot out of sequence so the last three weeks doesn't necessarily mean the last fifteen minutes of the film. You can't see the join."

"[On the early end of a Broadway run] So I went over there and, I'm delighted to say, the play flopped [audience laughter]. I hated New York. I loathed it. I sent Michael [Mills] a telegram after the notice went up at the end of the first week. It said "Boeing Boeing coming off next week. Am at your full disposal." He told me later that telegram arrived on his desk at Television Centre while he was holding a conference as to who should play Bertie [Wooster] as I wasn't available."

"Although I have always loved the noise of laughter, I really can't fear the coming of quiet. As for funerals, I rather like them. Such nice things are always said about the deceased, I feel sad that they had to miss hearing it all by just a few days."

"We used to say he had a computer in his head. His memory was astonishing."

"I was a born club comic. Radio and TV and stage were fine, but I found my real home in cabaret."

"Smarmy, plastic, oily, greasy, unctuous, shallow, superficial, old-fashioned, superannuated, crap"

"I suddenly realised I could maybe occupy a different position because of age, a kind of acceptance."

"My father was ruined by hard drink - he sat on an icicle."

"People always say: "You're a comedian, tell us a joke." They don't say: "You're an MP, tell us a lie.""

"No one watched it, not even the cameramen"

"Silence is not only golden; it is seldom misquoted."

"I can still enjoy sex at 74 - I live at 75, so it's no distance."

"The last time I was in Spain I got through six Jeffrey Archer novels. I must remember to take enough toilet paper next time."

"I've always known that I polarise opinion. Some people respond with enthusiasm and affection. In others, I awaken a lot of hostility."

"I'll never stop working. I want to die in the saddle. A day is wasted for me if I haven't done something even mildly creative."