People may say that what I do is very clever, but it's not really at all. It's not Swift.

That business aspect of the media, that Charlotte Street world, the advertising and programme executives, it leaves me absolutely cold. I'm supposed to be the director of a television company, but I've only ever seen that company as a vehicle for making the kind of programmes we wanted to make, getting our ideas on the screen.

William Hague, the world's favourite hairline.

In a more intellectually rigorous age, I wouldn't be talked about as a satirist at all. I would just be a topical comedian.

I am just fascinated by this reassurance from a menacing figure. It is rather frightening.

Politics now is rather like going into Starbucks for a coffee.

When you consider what Tony Blair was saying about liberty, human rights and that sort of thing, it would be terribly revolutionary to sell the speeches he and Jack Straw made in 1994.