There is an old story about the boy at Eton who committed suicide. The other boys in his house were gathered together and asked if any of them could suggest a reason for the tragedy. After a long silence a small boy in the front put up his hand: 'Could it have been the food, sir?

Better to go than sit around being a terrible old bore.

Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics and the shits into law

In England, we have a curious institution called the Church of England. Its strength has always been in the fact that on any moral or political issue it can produce such a wide divergence of opinion that nobody -- from the Pope to Mao Tse-tung -- can say with any confidence that he is not an Anglican. Its weaknesses are that nobody pays much attention to it and very few people attend its functions.

Strange how much simple wisdom there is to be found in the deformed head and unprepossessing carcase of your typical London cabbie.

The two sides of industry have traditionally always regarded each other in Britain with the greatest possible loathing, mistrust and contempt. They are both absolutely right.

When Glenda Jackson reveals that she has never been in a relationship with a man in which he hasn't raised his fists to her, I don't know whether this tells us more about the contemporary male or about Glenda Jackson.