Harry Enfield

“You need a lot of words to say anything in German.”

“The magistrate who originally sentenced Eric Cantona to prison said that millions of young people saw him as a role model and tried to copy his behaviour. I wonder if this is true.”

“I tried for about a year to write a teenage character until I finally got the phrase 'he has lost the power of rational thought and the use of his arms.' Everything else came from that.”

“There's nothing nicer than a wicked bad person in a story is there? It's fun.”

“Comedians are like pop bands. When you're young, you have ruddy principles and don't do old stuff because you don't want to take away the purity of youth. But then as you get older, you look at The Rolling Stones and see what fun they have.”

“Like all extremely nice people, I tend to be on the side of the underdog, or at least feel sorry for him.”

“America exports its culture world-wide but with us they don't have to surmount a language barrier, and therefore they swamp us. While other European cultures are protected from erosion by their languages, ours is not.”

“Writing scripts is fine because you get through a page quickly. But writing words just reminds me of school. To me a novel would be like writing a 300-page essay.”

“Ricky Gervais captured the staggering laziness that comes with a boring job.”

“I don't think I know anyone who would go around going, 'That's a good idea for a gag.'”

“I played Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, David Cameron - four Prime Ministers. If Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister I would find it difficult that I would not be allowed to play him because of the colour of his skin.”

“My friend Kate St John is not only a brilliant musician and beautiful person, but also an excellent White Goods Adviser.”

“What Paul and I do is not fashionable - it's a load of silly characters mucking about.”

“You're cutting off your nose to spite your face if you try to be self-consciously cutting-edge.”

“It's about time we stopped being so insecure and defensive and admitted that the Germans are better at economics than us. We like laughing and they like maths.”

“I'm a legend. Me and Vauxhall Astras. We're legends.”

“I can understand why people don't like fox hunting, but I really can't see why anyone other than vegans can object to game shooting.”

“My own schooldays convince me that I would not send a child of mine to be educated by a grinning monk any more than I would send him to a mullah in Iran.”

“People were always saying, 'are you going to do a film of any of the characters in the TV show.' The only ones that were appropriate were Kevin and Perry. There's a precedent with 'Wayne's World' and the 'Bill And Ted' films.”

“I don't understand why the Euro-sceptics think monetary union will lead to a federal Europe. It seems to me that the opposite is the case.”