The repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics.

Whoever called snooker "chess with balls" was rude, but right.

Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.

The British secret service was staffed at one point almost entirely by alcoholic homosexuals working for the KGB

The British hamburger thus symbolised, with savage neatness, the country's failure to provide its ordinary people with food which did anything more for them than sustain life.

If an artist is any good at all, then he or she will have a later phase that's more interesting than the early one.

The smartest move I ever made in showbusiness was to start off looking like the kind of wreck I would end up as. I was already aged in the wood.