“If you're thinking of coming to America, this is what it's like: you've got your Comfort Inn, you've got your Best Western, and you've got your Red Lobster where you eat. Everybody's very fat, everybody's very stupid and everybody's very rude - it's not a holiday programme, it's the truth.”
“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.”
“When I was 16, I wanted to look like Lord Byron. It's not really a haircut so much as a hair-not-cut, but I've never changed it. It's a bit Byron, a bit Don Juan DeMarco and other things that I aspire to be.”
“I've been told by the BBC that if I make one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time, I will be sacked. And even the angel Gabriel would struggle to survive with that hanging over his head. It's inevitable that one day, someone, somewhere will say that I've offended them, and that will be that.”
“Ambition is a very dangerous thing because either you achieve it and your life ends prematurely, or you don't, in which case your life is a constant source of disappointment. You must never have ambition.”
“I don't think I am particularly funny. In fact, I know I'm not.”
“I like to be loved by my children, and I quite like the Guardian hating me.”
“I have had an amazingly fortunate life. I'm a child from Yorkshire, which is sort of like Cleveland without the pretty bits.”
“You take out an injunction against somebody or some organisation and immediately news of that injunction and the people involved and the story behind the injunction is in a legal-free world on Twitter and the Internet. It's pointless.”
“I like to be loved by my children, and I quite like the 'Guardian' hating me. I like it when I read they want me to die painfully. Then I think I've really got under their skin. It's like annoying a teacher. Once they've shown signs of weakness, you really can go for them.”