Once, BBC television had echoed BBC radio in being a haven for standard English pronunciation. Then regional accents came in: a democratic plus. Then slipshod usage came in: an egalitarian minus. By now slovenly grammar is even more rife on the BBC channels than on ITV. In this regard a decline can be clearly charted... If the BBC, once the guardian of the English language, has now become its most implacable enemy, let us at least be grateful when the massacre is carried out with style.

Every sentence he manages to utter scatters its component parts like pond water from a verb chasing its own tail.

They had a... dog called Bluey. A know psychopath, Bluey would attack himself if nothing else was available.

It's my mission to tell the Australians from abroad in my work that Australia is a wonderful place.

It is almost better to be an impulse shirt-buyer than an impulse shoe-buyer. I have worn shirts that made people think I was a retired Mafia hit-man or a Yugoslavian sports convener from Split, but I have worn shoes that made people think I was insane.

Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.

She [Marilyn Monroe] was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.