The BBC is a perfect example of uncontrolled growth, [occupying] old churches and manor houses, the old Langham Hotel where Sherlock Holmes once met Moriarty and where this correspondent once shared an office with an 8-foot bathtub.

What has reality shows got to do with reality? It is beyond unreality; there is nothing real about it.

Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture.

We are on Sunday night because that is where they put us 30-odd years ago. I think we became a habit.

BBC Radio is not so much an art or industry as it is a way of life . . . a mirror that reflects . . . the eccentricities, the looniness that make Britons slightly different from other humans.

When I did that interview with Hepburn, the only ground rule was, you did not discuss Spencer Tracy. Spencer Tracy's widow is still alive, and she respected that.

In many ways when Jerry Ford pardoned Nixon, in a certain way, he did speak for the country.