Quotes

I've only ever bought one album for myself and it was "But Seriously" by Phil Collins, and if there's a better reason never to buy another album then I'd like to hear it.

[on bankers] I think there's a lot of anger at them because I think basically not only have they cost us a lot of money but they've shown very little remorse. I've not heard bankers say sorry. I've heard a lot of bankers say it's time we stopped saying sorry but I've not heard them say sorry.

[on Doctor Who (2005)] It's a children's programme; it's not for me, and I was a fool to think my opinion of it mattered. Though not as much of a fool as I would have been if I was an adult thinking that about the original series, which was proudly and unambiguously a children's show - whereas now, for some reason, we're all encouraged to weigh in. My parents never watched Doctor Who (1963) - it wouldn't have occurred to them to do so. They might have been fond of it, they might have said 'Oh yes, I used to watch that as a child'. What they wouldn't go on to say was '...and I still do now'. Whereas these days, a huge amount of stuff seems to be aimed at children, but with the assumption that adults - and not just parents - will consume it too. No-one in the 1920s surely, was reading Winnie the Pooh unless they had a child to read it to.

[on Downton Abbey (2010)] I think it's terribly written but still enjoy watching it and I don't know why. I'll watch and think: 'No one would say that, why's that happening?' Maybe the enjoyment of the sets and costumes is enough to sustain it.

I've never gone in for one of the Personality Tests, but largely because I think I'm too feeble-minded and I'd probably become a Scientologist. I'd probably go in all "Oh, this is going to be absolute nonsense" and then they'd say something and I'd go "Ah!" So I'm afraid of them, basically.

I read the Hobbit, I thought that was alright. Then I tried to read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and I sort of, at the age of about 11, and I sort of petered out halfway through the Two Towers you know, having, and God knows how many books I will never have read because of time it took me to crawl halfway through that book. And I felt filled with self-loathing that this apparently great thing, I wasn't getting what was great about it. And then later on you react to that saying, "No it's not that I wasn't getting what was great about it. It's boring, it's meaningless and its fans take it absurdly seriously."

The trouble is that some children are timorous and some children are reckless, and in order to save the lives of reckless children, warnings are calibrated for their safety, the result of which is that the timorous live in a state of perpetual terror. What I needed to be told is, 'you know what? Most days, you won't die. It's fine.' I wasn't ever going to tear across a three-lane motorway. The very existence of a three-lane motorway in the same post code as me made me not want to leave the house.

So we surrender to stupidity, do we? Freedom of speech is sacrificed at the altar of manufactured rage.

There's something fishy about Google's motto, "Don't Be Evil." I'm not saying it's controversial but it makes you think, "Why bring that up? Why have you suddenly put the subject of being evil on the agenda?" It's suspicious in the same way as Ukip constantly pointing out how racist they're not

There's got to be a nasty or dangerous side to anything enjoyable or there's something wrong, something suspicious and hidden. If everything seems perfect, it means you're one of the Eloi and a Morlock is watching you with a napkin tucked under its chin.

The Research Excellence Framework is starting to ask what sorts of curiosity our culture can afford, and that scares me even more than the demise of the silly survey because it strikes at the heart of what it means to be civilised, to have instincts other than survival. If academic endeavour had always been vetted in advance for practicality, we wouldn't have the aeroplane or the iPhone, just a better mammoth trap.

As a nation we spent decades sharing a laugh at the inadequacies of British Rail with its lateness, dirtiness, rudeness and terrible sandwiches. The failings in our rail network were a shared collective reflection on our failings as a community. British Rail was crap because everything was crap, because we were also, individually and collectively, a bit crap - laughable and decrepit and doomed, like all humans have always been. But somehow redeemed by our capacity to self-mock.

It's as if they actually think that what other people think of them somehow doesn't matter. I mean, I know we're all supposed to believe that, but obviously, none of us actually do. And nor should we, because it does! It does matter! And the people who genuinely believe it doesn't tend to be the very people who ought to care most what other people think of them, because what the other people are thinking is, 'No, actually, I don't think the Chinese are "up to something,"' or, 'You should use mouthwash,' or, 'Your mania for the collective socialization of agriculture will surely cause the deaths of millions,' or, 'Forty cats is too many cats."

This society doesn't work without booze - our parties aren't good enough, our conversations aren't sufficiently interesting, nor is our self-confidence high enough to sustain our interactions without alcohol. It's everywhere, lubricating everything."

Those were the terms in which my parents, keen for me to grow up well grounded in cynicism, explained things to me. Sweets, chocolates and crisps were all very well, but to buy them by the checkout, on an impulse, was falling into a trap. Instead, I was taught the pleasure of watching other people fall into it and feeling smug. The fact that the sensation of smugness was more pleasurable to me than that of salt or sugar tells you all you need to know about the kind of monster who comes to prominence in modern Britain.

Long live the Bumbling Badger of Mediocrity.

I don't like Humans touching me.