Singer Songwriters From England

"The Italians have got opera, the Spanish have got flamenco dancing. What have we got? Weight Watchers."

"[On a difficult relationship with her mother, Helen] If she'd only gone out to work, we would all have been a lot happier. Being in the house drove her mad. She hated housework, cooking. She'd go into the garden and chop down trees. She was full of energy and batting against the walls with it. And this gave me a real sense that you had to have your own life. It's ridiculous to stay at home with your children if it drives you nuts. Children would much rather see a happy, smiley person come back."

"I was just thinking as Alan [Bennett] and I walked up the steps, how nice it would have been if one of us had come up in a stairlift."

"People think I hate sex. I don’t. I just don’t like things that stop you seeing the television properly."

"Where are you in the menstrual cycle? Taurus."

"[Asked if she ever had childhood holidays in Blackpool] No. What do you take me for? We used to go to Vienna."

"[Song]] Not bleakly, Not meekly Beat me on the bottom with the Woman's Weekly Let's do it, let's do it tonight!"

"We'd like to apologise to our viewers in the North - it must be awful for you."

"Sometimes I think that being widowed is God's way of telling you to come off the pill."

"I should probably say only correct things, but I have a sneaking suspicion if everybody does that, the world’s going to die of boredom. The world needs a fool — not that I think I’m a fool. Though some may disagree."

"You know, even in 1917 they've done it with a Sikh soldier, which is great. I mean, it's brilliant, but you're suddenly aware. It's like, "there were Sikhs fighting in the this war," and you're like, "OK, you're now diverting me away from a story of what the story is..." It is kind of racist, if there is racism. If you're talking about institutional racism, which is what everyone loves to go on about - which I'm not a believer in, you know - there is something institutionally racist about forcing diversity on people in that way."

"It's so easy to throw the charge of racism at everybody and it's really starting to get boring now."

"[On his vote in the 2017 general election.] I voted for "Magic Grandpa" Jeremy Corbyn last time, but then I realised he was an anti-semitic old Marxist."

"[Undecided on his vote for then forthcoming 2019 general election because of their "hate-speech laws".] You’re the Conservative Party, the clue's in the word! I would vote for a conservative party, but not this one."

"I say, "Can we just get on and not be mean to each other?" But I feel compelled to be mean to the wokies."

"I've encountered racism from black people towards me, when I was working in Kenya for seven months. It’s the way you’re spoken to — racism can be deferential."

"Just completed my GB News show trial. I mean disciplinary hearing. I think the rules are that I can't speak freely about it. Which is totally on brand. For the home of free speech."

"Remember. It's OK to encourage acid attacks on Nigel Farage. It's OK to wish Boris Johnson died of Covid. It's OK to want white people dead. As long as it's on the @BBC or the propaganda media. It’s not OK to not want to shag someone. We must protect the "broadcast ecology" for Adam Boulton at all costs."

"It's called free speech. I realise that the new woke world is low on laughter and high on offence, but it's still worth trying to find the lighter moments in this joyless new cancel culture which has been created for us."

"First of all, don’t take a pop at Dan Wootton for something I said. That’s not fair. Secondly. I stand by every word of what I said."

"So you keep trying to cancel away in your state of permanent offence, I've been cancelled already and may well be again, but I don't care one bit, and I will keep defending my right to have an opinion on issues which concern me. Without free speech and the presumption of innocence we are not free. We aren't quite communist Eastern Europe yet. We may very close, but not quite there. It's still worth fighting for. So if you are expecting a grovelling apology, I suggest you don't hold your breath. I won't ever apologise to the mob."

"If I was going to be sensible and I could replay it, I would say: "Any self-respecting man in 2023 would probably be well advised to avoid a woman who possessed that worldview because she would probably cause him nothing but harm." But what I did say was, you know: "I wouldn't shag that," and all that sort of stuff, which is not right. It's demeaning to her, to Ava, so I'm sorry for demeaning you in that way, however angry I am with you still for doing that, and it demeans me because it's not representative of who I am."

"Show me a single self-respecting man that would like to climb into bed with that woman ever, ever, who wasn't an incel. That cucked little woman has been fed, spoon-fed, oppression, day after day after day after day. We need powerful, strong amazing women who make great points for themselves. We don’t need this sort of feminist 4.0. They're pathetic and embarrassing. Who'd want to shag that?"

"[After his Question Time appearance] Suddenly, I was denounced by the whole of showbiz. I thought, Oh, it’ll be alright. But it wasn't. It just got worse and worse."

"My agent was like, "I’ll stand by you, darling ... Get out!""

"It's grim [...] but with it comes an incredible feeling of liberation. You think I can say anything because I'm not going to lose my job, because I've already lost my job. So now I can resist this disgusting religion of wokery. I'm going to resist it with all of my heart."

"I personally think it's a dreadful idea that Holocaust denial is, you know, a crime in various places because how are you going to give someone an opportunity to air their ridiculous views, without evidence, without giving someone else the opportunity to correct them?"

"Success is standing. Success is getting to the end and not losing my mind."

"[On being expelled from Harrow for having sex at the sixth-form dance with twins] My choice of venue for said escapade could have been better ["Middle of the dance floor on a bar stool"]. My ancient housemaster turned to me and said, "Your penis was visible." Those were our final words."

"What I want to do in life is make people happy. Every day I wake up and say, ‘I’m going to make people smile."

"Who the hell even asked for 5G????? Whatever you do. DO NOT GET 5G"

"I've never felt the need to tell anyone that I'm bisexual. I don't feel like I am. I just feel like I'm attracted to who I like. I honestly feel like everyone is like that."

"Haven't I made it obvious? Haven't I made it clear? Want me to spell it out for you? F-R-I-E-N-D-S Haven't I made it obvious? Haven't I made it clear? Want me to spell it out for you? F-R-I-E-N-D-S F-R-I-E-N-D-S"

"I only arrived in the world in 1988, by which point you were already seeing many of the great things happen and by the time I started going clubbing it was all about jungle It was great fun, but a hostile environment. It wasn’t a place for a gangly, 6-foot-5-inch, mousy-haired, scarf-wearing twat like myself. More a place go and do shed loads of cocaine and try and start a fight. But I loved the sound system. The culture of taking sound systems around really interested me, and when dubstep broke, that was it."

"I would be spooning my 6'8" boyfriend. I'm the big spoon, obviously. He'll love that I said that."

"Dancing on the hood in the middle of the woods On an old Mustang, where we sang Songs with all our childhood friends And it went like this, say Oops, I got 99 problems singing bye, bye, bye Hold up, if you wanna go and take a ride with me Better hit me, baby, one more time, uh Paint a picture for you and me On the days when we were young, uh Singing at the top of both our lungs"

"I am so sad to hear of her passing but at the same time so glad to have met her and experienced first-hand her warm, fun-loving personality. Her voice will sing in my heart forever."

"As we commemorate 75 years since Victory in Europe, we must all remember the brave boys and what they sacrificed for us … they left their families and homes to fight for our freedom, and many lost their lives trying to protect us and our liberties. This year, we must commemorate this special anniversary apart. I hope that VE Day will remind us all that hope remains even in the most difficult of times and that simple acts of bravery and sacrifice still define our nation as the NHS works so hard to care for us. Most of all, I hope today serves as a reminder that however hard things get, we will meet again."

"Everything that I do is very autobiographical. I’m trying to be as much of an open book as possible and give the audience every single piece of me."

"The music industry as a whole just needs more women. There are a lot of men at the top of the ranks."

"Feminism to me is not man-hating, it’s just being like "we deserve the same opportunities". “You hear so much about all these strong important men who have changed the world, even in history and the story of mankind, somehow the fucking story starts with: ‘Well, the man did this.’"

"When the night's here, I don't do tears Baby, no chance I could dance, I could dance, I could dance Watch me dance, dance the night away My heart could be burnin', but you won't see it on my face Watch me dance, dance the night away I'll still keep the party runnin', not one hair out of place."

"So often the story of rock’n’roll is told from a male perspective. So often it feels like men own music. And I still get as angry and frustrated about that as I ever did. Reading those women’s accounts of their lives has reminded me how much they paved the way back then. And history too often erases the women, in all art forms. Every single published story of a female artist goes a small way towards redressing the balance, and is another one saved from the fire.I didn’t try to be a soul singer, a jazz singer, a blues singer – no category…My music is my expression of what I feel and believe in a moment."

"I feel very lucky to still feel like I’m full of ideas. I think sometimes being in the beginning or the middle of things is almost the best bit. This sounds terrible, because it sounds so ungrateful, but I’m never as excited by the aftermath of things: whether or not they are successful. It’s lovely if they are, obviously, but actually the really exciting bit is when it’s an idea in your head and you’re getting working on it."

"It turned into a creature with a life of its own.There was nothing we were doing to make it happen. We couldn’t recreate it because we never really understood how it happened. People decided they were all going to play it, and you feel like it’s disconnected from you. All we could do was stand back and take the congratulations that came."

"“Never fancied him anyway,” I’d write when a boy dumped me. I’d leave out things that had gone wrong, or been difficult. I think it was partly an exercise in defiance, a refusal to be defeated by life’s adversities. So in that sense, my diary was a bit of a self-help manual, written by me, for me."

"I'm all lost in the supermarket I can no longer shop happily I came in here for that special offer A guaranteed personality"

"He was just there, looking fantastic... the bastard."

"When I saw how animals are tortured on factory farms, I couldn't justify being a part of that cruelty. I thought, "Imagine if that were me". Straight away, I said, "That's it – I'm going vegetarian"."

"I have been vegetarian for almost 15 years now, and I made the transition to being vegan slowly about 5 years ago. … Hate mushrooms? Prepare to fall in love with them. always freaked you out? You ain’t cooking it right then. One of the best things about being vegan is how much you come to appreciate food … it's just about opening up your palette and trying new things. Once you get into it, you won't go back."