My mother, she didn't believe in praise. She'd never say anything was great. I think that's quite Northern, to not make people feel too good. I didn't mind if she was proud of me or not, it didn't bother me. I was never trying to please her.

I have been in a youth hostel...You are put in a kitchen with seventeen venture scouts with behavioural difficulties and made to wash swedes.

On a train, why do I always end up sitting next to the woman who's eating the individual fruit pie by sucking the filling out through the hole in the middle?

I've never understood the point of ecstasy. I think if I wanted to get dehydrated and jump about with a load of people I've never met before I could go to a Methodist barn dance.

Well, I think there's not much of a chance for me finding somebody of my age. Gentlemen of my age are dropping down 30 years to find girlfriends.

I sometimes think that being widowed is God's way of telling you to come off the Pill.

You know daytime television? You know what it's supposed to be for? It's to keep unemployed people happy. It's supposed to stop them running to the social security demanding mad luxuries like cookers and windows.