The depressing thing about an Englishman's traditional love of animals is the dishonesty thereof ... Get a barbed hook into the upper lip of a salmon, drag him endlessly around the water until he loses his strength, pull him to the bank, hit him on the head with a stone, and you may well become fisherman of the year. Shoot.the salmon and you'll never be asked again.

I understand it is 13-8 against Egon Ronay publishing a Good Betting Shop Food Guide by 1997.

If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.

I was going to talk about Nicholas Parsons' ignorance, but 18 seconds would be a wholly insufficient time.

Owning a racehorse is probably the most expensive way of getting on to a racecourse for nothing.

Wine buffs write and talk as though the food and wine will be in your mouth at the same time, that one is there to be poured over the other. This is bullshit. Gustatory enjoyment comes from food and wine and cigars of your liking. So far no one has said that a Monte Cristo is the only cigar to smoke after Armagnac, Romeo and Juliet after Calvados ... but the time may yet come.

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