ARTS / Overheard

There was a very cold wind blowing in the Eighties. Mrs T was breathing down our necks, and Rees-Mogg was hovering like some helicopter . . . preaching that there was too much opera for the country to afford. The biggest load of bull ever spoken.

Peter Jonas, departing

managing director of

ENO, Times

(A) pretty chastening experience.

Liz Forgan, Managing

Director of BBC Radio, on

listening to Mark Tully at

the Radio Academy Festival

Tyrannosaurus is eminently believable and as scientifically accurate in appearance and behaviour as current studies suggest. Well, perhaps a little ponderous of gait and too pristine dentally.

Angela Miller of the Natural

History Museum's Department

of Palaeontology on

Jurassic Park, Guardian

Billy Wilder made an awful lot of suggestions during the interval but it was a bit too late to do much about them.

Christopher Hampton,

adaptor of Sunset

Boulevard, Daily Telegraph

I thought the young man was marvellous, but I never look at women on stage.

Shirley Bassey at the same

premiere, Daily Telegraph

Ike in this film is probably more lovable than Ike was in real life.

Martha Southgate on What's

Love Got to Do with It, a film

about Tina Turner, Premiere

I passed through on my last tour . . . and New York seemed to say 'Come live with me'.

Mike Scott, singer,

the Waterboys, Observer

It was as close as you can come to seeing your own funeral.

Gloria Estefan on the road

accident three years ago that

nearly killed her, Observer