Playing rugby at school I once fell on a loose ball and, through ignorance and fear, held on despite a fierce pummelling. After that it took me months to convince my team-mates I was a coward.

I would like to like to make one thing clear at the very outset and that is, when you speak of a train robbery, this involved no loss of train, merely what I like to call the contents of the train, which were pilfered. We haven't lost a train since 1946, I believe it was - the year of the great snows when we mislaid a small one.

Job was what you'd technically describe as a loony.

The thing that makes you know that Vernon Ward is a good painter is if you look at his ducks, you can see the eyes follow you around the room.

I would much prefer to be a judge than a coal miner because of the absence of falling coal.

I didn't know dirty words could be done that artfully.

I am blind -- but I am able to read thanks to a wonderful new system known as 'broil' . . . I'm sorry, I'll just feel that again.

The garden of Eden was a boggy swamp just south of Croydon. You can see it over there.

If there's one thing I can't bear, it's when hundreds of old men come creeping in through the window in the middle of the night and throw all manner of garbage over me. I can't bear that.

You realize that suicide's a criminal offense. In less enlightened times they'd have hung you for it.

Everything I've ever told you, including this, is a lie.

As I looked out into the night sky, across all those infinite stars, it made me realize how insignificant they are.