Ronnie Barker was a straightforward man who had this extraordinary ability to make the nation laugh.
There is barely a country in the world where you will be completely safe.
Please don’t ask which I enjoy more – acting or hosting – because I love them equally.
People say the most stupid things on the spur of the moment that they then have to retract.
I will die, but not retire.
I am restless. I don’t mind leaving this comfortable, static life. I could live a year on my own in a remote village.
Despite having seen a fair amount of the world, I still love travelling – I just have an insatiable curiosity and like looking out of a window.
Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won’t be made safer by creating barriers between people.
I’m aware that, if you feel down, it can be strangely unrelated to circumstances around you. That’s just the way life is.
George Harrison’s passing was really sad, but it does make the afterlife seem much more attractive.
The Buddhist version of poverty is a situation where you have nothing to contribute.
Listen – strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
You can’t get a suit of armour and a rubber chicken just like that. You have to plan ahead.
I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start.
My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.
Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.
As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning’s thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, ‘I do not believe in God’, when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence.
They are trying their best to indict a young generation, who seem to be setting a triumphant example to the older generation – an example of how to enjoy oneself, something which most Englishmen don’t seem really capable of, especially the cynical pressmen of the News of the World. It’s all very sad.
Talk to a Dutch journalist for an hour. He has 38 questions.
You’re not a has-been, you’re a has-now.’ I like that.
Of course I would do it again, but I know it would never be quite the same. Despite the best laid plans of the BBC, we ended up bustling, hurrying, rushing, improvising to get ourselves home only by the skin of our teeth. And that’s what made it worth doing. The smoother the journey the duller it would have been.