Denis Norden Quotes

What is a harp but an oversized cheese slicer with cultural pretensions?

You know you're getting old when a four-letter word for something pleasurable two people can do in bed together is R-E-A-D.

If the laughter of the audience was malicious we wouldn't show it.

If all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players, where do all the audiences come from?

It's like your children talking about holidays, you find they have a quite different memory of it from you. Perhaps everything is not how it is, but how it's remembered.

I defy anyone to get a decision that quickly these days.

It's a funny kind of month, October. For the really keen cricket fan it's when you discover that your wife left you in May.

A counter tenor is anyone who can count to ten.

I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.

The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up.

There's an unseen force which lets birds know when you've just washed your car.

And when you're on your own there is that terrifying possibility that you may be the only person on the planet who thinks it's funny - and you have no way of finding out.

Middle age is when, whenever you go on holiday, you pack a sweater.

Then after that came word processors and it's hard to make those laugh.

Dictum on television scripts: We don't want it good - we want it Tuesday.