A biography for Harry Enfieldhasn’t been written yet.
“Every day I get something in the post telling me to worry about something else. Worry mail is big business.”
“When looking for an Oscar-winning performance Americans demand not mental instability but mental disability, ie Tom Hanks playing a simpleton or Dustin Hoffman as an autistic man. The Yanks are suckers for such patronising tosh.”
“Sometimes I have really good ideas, but it is always Paul's language that makes them work. Without him I'd be more clinical, more mundane. What I achieve with him is different to any thing I could ever hope to achieve with any one else.”
“I hated everything but punk for a long time.”
“I was once asked to be a guest presenter on 'The Big Breakfast' for a week while Chris Evans was away, but I said no as I knew I'd be hopeless. If they asked me to guest present the 'Today' programme on Radio 4, however, I'd jump at the chance.”
“God knows what the Yanks will make of 'Kevin and Perry.' It's totally gross to them because we don't look like we're off 'Dawson's Creek' or whatever. They'll think we're really weird.”
“In the 1970s the government propped up managers who couldn't run their industries properly. Nowadays they prop up our lousy managers who can't run our services properly.”
“I'm not very good at acting. Overacting is what I do.”
“It's good fun making commercials because you are picked up in a posh car and pampered all day by your personal pamperer, or 'runner' as they are known in the business.”
“My grandmother had a couple of strange books published by the Woolfs. I didn't know her - she was dead by the time I was born. But I knew my grandfather. He was lovely.”
“If you were going to compare me to a car, I'd be very flattered to be compared to a Vauxhall Astra. Rowan Atkinson would be a Ferrari, I suppose. Or maybe that's Steve Coogan. And Rowan would be an Aston Martin. He's a bit classier than a Ferrari. Or Hugh Grant would be a Ferrari. And I'd be a Vauxhall Astra. That suits me down to the ground.”
“About once a month, our local church would have an evening Folk Mass, and my mother would drag us along because she saw that the ghastly creatures who sung on these occasions strummed guitars, and she associated all guitar strumming with pop music.”
“You can be a bit more naughty with a live show.”
“Boys are strange creatures.”
“The older generation may see us as plucky little Britain, on the Edge of Europe. But more and more of the post-war generation see Britain as a less beautiful, more cramped, more snobbish, less glamorous version of America.”
“Why don't men become primary teachers? Partly, I suppose, because the pay is so insulting; but then it is for all teachers, as the state seems to consider the manufacture of adults less important than the manufacture of just about anything else.”
“I'm nothing like Michael Barrymore.”
“If religion bends to society's whims, like Peter Tatchell himself, it ceases to be religious, so what's the point?”
“If the continual cutting back of public services has led to low public morale then simply pass a few feel-good Acts to force people to be happy.”
“Little boys are different from little girls, tend to develop more slowly, and are generally more stupid than their sisters.”