Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?" Mort thought for a moment. "No," he said eventually, "what?" There was silence. Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever" he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"

And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.

Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we'd be melting the bronze already.

I must have read every issue of 'Punch' published in the 20th century, and I think in the process I picked up the true voice of English humour - that amiable, fairly liberal, laconic voice which you find in something like 'Three Men in a Boat.'

We live and learn, or, perhaps more importantly we learn and live.

In order to have a change of fortune at the last minute, you have to take your fortune to the last minute.