Gazing at the typewriter in moments of desperation I console myself with three thoughts. Alcohol at six, dinner at eight, and to be immortal you've got to be dead.

If you'd spent your life being called "Gyles Brandreth", you would crawl across broken glass to achieve the bliss, the simplicity, the purity, the joy of simply being called "Bob".

As a politician, you only meet two types of people. People with problems, and people who are right.

In the Members' Dining Room, the Conservatives eat at one end, the Labour Party at the other, while the Liberals wait at table.

Praise makes me humble, but when I am abused, I know that I have touched the stars.

If God had meant us to go metric, why did he give Christ twelve apostles?

He loved what he did, he loved being on Countdown - he just loved life