Ian Hislop Quotes

My mother was a terrific force in my life. Wartime-generation woman, hadn't gone to university but should have done. Was very funny, very verbal, very clever, very witty.

I've got a very peculiar sort of fame, based on being on the telly. It doesn't mean you have the lifestyle people expect.

No, there are no hard and fast rules about sources, no printed booklet to help journalists through.

The best comedy is where you attack the strong, not the weak.

I like making films about old people because they are repositories of amazing stories that they tell well. And they're incredibly good telly.

England Their England by AG Macdonell which was written in the thirties and is about a young Scotsman who's got shell shocked during the First World War… I love it.

I've seen the Pokémon movie, which is probably the worst movie ever made on any subject ever.

You end up with this succession of periods when everything was marvellous - from King Arthur to the medieval times, Ivanhoe, chivalry, Henry VIII, Merry England, the Blitz

There's an awful lot of terrible television which I could do, but I mostly stick to Have I Got News for You.

Internet journalism is not a world we know very well at all. It's conducted more on the screen and less in bars, which makes it rather less useful for getting stories about people throwing up over one another, which is what one's after.

All the libel lawyers will tell you there's no libel any more, that everyone's given up.

I get paid to do what I enjoy, not that common a condition.

Modest about our national pride - and inordinately proud of our national modesty.

You have a huge amount of confidence when you're younger, which slowly ebbs away for the rest of your life. You think: 'No problem. I can do that. Why shouldn't I do it?'