Quotes

One mistake up here, and it's half a day out with the undertaker.

Did you like that? [said after he's just felled a chimney]

A man who says he feels no fear is either a fool or a liar.

I realise that steam engines aren't everyone's cup of tea. But they're what made England great.

The modern world stinks.

We've become a nation of con men, living by selling double glazing to each other.

Steam engines don't answer back. You can belt them with a hammer and they say nowt.

I set out as a steeplejack in my youth to preserve chimneys. I've finished by knocking most of them down.

Height gives you a wonderful feeling of grandeur. You're the king of the castle up here.

I'm just a bum who climbs chimneys.

[being scathing about people who demolish chimneys the easy way, with dynamite] With dynamite, they're all 200 yards away, hiding.

[talking about dying] The ideal way out would be, I think, instead of dying in bed of lung cancer or something 'orrible like that, just to drop off [a chimney] one sunny day when I'm about seventy-five and that'll be the end.

Anybody who destroys anything made of stone should be prosecuted. It is not all beautiful, but it took a man all day to make one stone.

[after a chimney that he was preparing for demolition fell down spontaneously a day too soon] Aye, well - nobody's been killed, but it's bloody knackered up their fancy day tomorrow, like. Fell down a day early!

I've never fallen off a big chimney; you only fall off one of them once!

We're breeding a generation that are not quite what they should be doing.

We've gone backwards in so many ways.