“I tried to like it. For me, it was like being smacked around the head by a piece of IKEA furniture: it hurts, but you’ve got to admire the workmanship.”

What I’d like to do now – well, what I’d like to do now is grow my beard very long, weave it into my pubes and strum it like a harp.

Thank God for Darwin, eh?

Nostalgia: How long’s that been around?

Marijuana? It’s harmless really, unless you fashion it into a club and beat somebody over the head with it

In Unity there is strength; We can move mountains when we’re united and enjoy life – Without unity we are victims. Stay united.

I am a confectionery-based existentialist.

This shed does not contain me.

It’s not a beard, it’s an animal I’ve trained to sit very still.

Work hard, save and live within your means.

Without the beat in the background, Jazz basically sounds like an armadillo was let loose on the keyboard.

I think we’ve missed a trick there. We could develop wheat with the properties of Velcro… to catch whatever it is that’s forming those crop circles! But then the spaceship would have to have the corresponding Velcro, so it’s a bit of a long shot.

Tonight’s show is about doubt. Or maybe it isn’t – haven’t made my mind up yet.

I’m English, and as such I crave disappointment. That’s why I buy Kinder Surprise. Horrible chocolate; nasty little toy: a double-whammy of disillusionment! Sometimes I eat the toy out of sheer despair.

People say ‘Bill, are you an optimist?’ And I say, ‘I hope so.’

The so-called Samaritan squirrel, which takes pity on the spider, and then the spider jumps on it and injects the paralyzing venom, while the squirrel remains bafflingly philosophical about the whole thing.

Orchestras have often been used to conjure up the natural world: Swans, sharks, trout, but not, as far as I know, the often maligned jellyfish.