Gyles Brandreth

"I had to pull about twenty pieces of broken glass out of my hand using tweezers and antiseptic cream. I'm never going to have a game of arm wrestling with Michael Howard again."

"If you'd spent your life being called "Gyles Brandreth", you would crawl across broken glass to achieve the bliss, the simplicity, the purity, the joy of simply being called "Bob"."

"[On the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government] I think it should be made clear that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, they have not got into bed together; they are merely sharing a room."

"It's different now, it's different now. Now I can speak the truth. I can tell you that the one thing I really, really couldn't bear when I was an MP were my constituents. [laughter] Let's face it: the people have contempt for the politicians; it is as nothing to the contempt we have for you. [laughter] All over this country, there are politicians on their way to the Labour Party conference, coming away from the LibDem one, getting ready to go to the Conservative one, thinking "God, at last he's said it. He's said what we all feel, that happiness is the constituency in the rear-view mirror.""

"I describe what I do on the day that I do it. The nice thing for me is that I do lots of different things on lots of different days."

"I get to my desk at eight in the morning and I leave it at seven in the evening and I just work away. I'm a work machine."

"One of the interesting things about writing a play is that when you've finished it you have to give it away."

"I've been keeping a diary since I was about 11. If you don't keep a diary everything washes away. And you can live everything three times: you live it when you live it, you live it when you write it down, and you live it a third time when you re-read it. Though I have to say rereading my diary for publication was a depressing experience. You shouldn't look back."

"I don't think people know actually what it's like to be an MP. MPs are cowed, they don't stand up for themselves, they don't tell you what hell it is. All that finger food. Photocalls at the old folks homes. MPs don't kiss babies because they want to!"

"Lewis Carroll is somebody who wore different hats. He was a clergyman, a mathematician, a teacher. He wrote serious books, and amazing children's books. He was a photographer. So like most people, he was many people in one skin. Creatively, he made a greater impact than almost any other Victorian, and yet we know next to nothing about him, we just fall back on the old cliché."

"After I lost my seat, Michelle [his wife] said, "Come on, you know when one door closes ... it is shut. What do you want to do now?" And that is when I thought, I want to do a musical."

"We are very happy to be here. Can I say that as well? This is a happy place to work. I enjoy coming in here and have done since I began coming in."

"In my wife's view, there is too much clutter. She has declared that the moment I die, she has the local skip company on rapid dial and everything will go."