Denis Norden

“I'm not a great fan of the modern style of personal agonising, which crops up a bit too often for my liking.”

“We saw more of each other than we did of our wives. We wrote everything together. But how long can you go on doing that? How long can you go on being half an entity?”

“I prefer radio to television. Radio is a dialogue; television is a monologue. In radio, you have to interact - they put the words in your head; you build the pictures in your mind. To that extent, it is more engaging than television.”

“You know you're getting old when a four-letter word for something pleasurable to do in bed is r-e-a-d.”

“It's like your children talking about holidays, you find they have a quite different memory of it from you. Perhaps everything is not how it is, but how it's remembered.”

“If it ain't baroque, don't fax it.”

“I recognise the pure gold that runs in Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's work for 'Outnumbered' on TV. And on radio, I really enjoy John Finnemore.”

“And if you can offer an explanation as to why it doesn't work then you've got to the whole root of comedy.”

“There's an unseen force which lets birds know when you've just washed your car.”

“My father made bridal dresses, which he sold wholesale, and always wanted me to join him. He looked upon what I did as precarious and frivolous - except that he loved it when my name was in the papers.”

“And when you're on your own there is that terrifying possibility that you may be the only person on the planet who thinks it's funny - and you have no way of finding out.”

“If the laughter of the audience was malicious we wouldn't show it.”

“It's a funny kind of month, October. For the really keen cricket fan, it's when you discover that your wife left you in May.”

“Bob Monkhouse, Galton and Simpson, Spike Milligan and I all started around the same time with an enormous advantage: working to an audience all of whom had shared an awful, common experience - the war.”

“I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.”

“You can't have your kayak and heat it.”

“Everyone who appears in a scene gets paid.”

“The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up.”

“I have better peripheral vision in my left. It is quite hard to remain optimistic, but I have found the Macular Society, of whom I've been an enthusiastic supporter for nine years, tremendously helpful in providing support.”

“I've written not milestones of cinema but millstones.”