“British women can’t cook.”

Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.

People think there’s a rigid class system here, but dukes have been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.

I’ve never been noticeably reticent about talking on subjects about which I know nothing.

There are always twenty excellent reasons for doing nothing for every one reason for starting anything-especially if it has never been done before.

As so often happens, I discover that it would have been better to keep my mouth shut.

Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival.

A gun is no more dangerous than a cricket bat in the hands of a madman.

If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.

I have frequently been misrepresented. I don’t hate the press; I find a lot of it is very unpalatable.

It’s a pleasure to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.

The man who invented the red carpet needed his head examined.

Everything that wasn’t invented by God is invented by an engineer.

Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, which I’ve practised for many years.

All money nowadays seems to be produced with a natural homing instinct for the Treasury.

We live in what virtually amounts to a museum – which does not happen to a lot of people.

I had been playing polo, and I decided to give up at the age of 50.

All birds are incipient or would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative evidence of this even in the crowing of the cock.

A cinema villain essentially needs a moustache so he can twiddle with it gleefully as he cooks up his next nasty plan.

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

Herbs are the friend of the physician and the pride of cooks.

My wife can’t cook at all. She made chocolate mousse. An antler got stuck in my throat.

If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it’s a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also – to do the lawn and clean the gutters.

People tend to stay at home and eat a home-cooked meal.

I will not allow a Delia Smith cookbook in my house! It’s all so precise with Delia, and it makes cooking seem so inaccessible.