In moments of considerable strain, I tend to take to bread-and-butter pudding. There is something about the blandness of soggy bread, the crispness of the golden outer crust and the unadulterated pleasure of a lightly set custard that makes the world seem a better place to live.

Congealed fat is pretty much the same, irrespective of the delicacy around which it is concealed.

To barbecue is a way of life rather than a desirable method of cooking.

I think our police are excellent, probably because I have not done anything that has occasioned being beaten up by these good men.

There's no law that decrees when not to whinge, but you reach a certain age - 80 seems about right - when you're expected to manifest querulousness - the coffee's too hot, the boiled egg's too soft.

If anyone tells me I'm fat, I say, - That's because every time I make love to your wife, she gives me a biscuit

I've known Nicholas Parsons for a fairly long time and his geniune pleasures are in rubber tubes, metal clips