Patricia Routledge

“People have always pitied spinsters. We have been derided, as if we had missed out on life.”

“There's a fashion abroad generally to speak the language as badly as possible. I'm of a mind to start a society for the reinstatement of the letter 't' and the banishment of the glottal stop.”

“I was never an ingenue, thank God; always character.”

“I've only done what I've really wanted to burn up energy on. If you can't wake up in the morning and look forward to what you're going to do in the evening - and twice on a Wednesday and a Saturday - then it's not worth doing.”

“I had a voice - I had an instrument - I loved singing and I had an inspired singing teacher, Miss Sleigh. I went to her every Saturday, and I now possess the upright Steinway piano beside which I used to stand in fear and trembling if I hadn't done my breathing exercises.”

“It wasn't rich, it was hard-working, but I give thanks daily for the kind of upbringing I had, and for the values my parents brought to their own relationship and to their children. They wanted my brother and me to find out what we were best at and make the most of it.”

“But it would be churlish of me not to appreciate what it's brought me. If a good number of people come into a theatre because they know me from the dreaded 'Mrs B', I couldn't be happier.”

“I didn't make a decision not to be married and not to be a mother - life just turned out like that because my involvement in acting was so total.”

“We finished series four of 'Hetty Wainthropp', we were told there was going to be series five.”