Quotes

Smokers pay £19,000 a minute to the Exchequer, and that's enough to pay for the whole police force. Or to put it another way, for every £1 we cost the National Health Service, we give it £3.60. Please don't encourage the state to dictate how I live my life.

[Sunday Times 24 July 2005] Only last week I was at my children's sports day and as I lay in the long grass by the river drinking pink champagne and chatting with other media parents, I remember thinking, 'God, I love being middle class'.

[in reaction to being hit in the face by a pie from a protester at his Honorary Degree ceremony] Good Shot!

The only person who ever looked good in the back of a four-seater convertible is Adolf Hitler.

We all know that small cars are good for us. But so is cod liver oil. And jogging. I want to drive around in a Terminator, not the heroine in an E.M. Forster novel.

Much more of a hoot to drive than you might imagine. Think of it, if you like, as a librarian with a G-string under the tweed. I do, and it helps.

Sure it's quiet, for a diesel. But that's like being well-behaved... for a murderer.

We only need look at Baroness Thatcher (Margaret Thatcher) to know what women can be like when they want to get in front.

The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a either black gay or a lesbian. Chalk and cheese, they reckon, works. But here we have Top Gear (2002) setting new records after six years using cheese and cheese. It confuses them.

I read in the papers how much I'm earning and fall about laughing because I'm sure it's not that much, otherwise I'd have an enormous boat. I'm literally not the slightest bit interested in money. I just don't pay any attention to money, it's rather vulgar.

I'd hate to see the day when a really bad bug like Ebola gets on a plane.

I long for a time when I think of myself as a European first and an Englishman second. I crave a United States of Europe with one currency, one army and one type of plug.

Britain, on its own, has little influence on the world stage. I think we are all agreed on that. But Europe, if it were well run and had good, cohesive, well thought-out policies, would be a tremendous force for good

The prime minister is a Labour Tory. There's a mosque at the end of your street and a French restaurant next door. We are neither in nor out of Europe. We are famous for our beer but we drink in wine bars. We are not a colonial power but we still have a commonwealth. We are jealous of the rich but we buy into the Hello! celebrity culture. We live in a United Kingdom that's no longer united. We are muddled.

And then the German, the Frenchman and I all clubbed together to talk the Swede out of killing himself.

School is supposed to prepare a person for life, not wear them out.