Quotes of the Week

"It's a very insulting term, besides which I've never called anyone `luvvie' in my entire life. `Darling' is a different matter. I'm getting old and senile and can never remember anyone's name, so I have to call them `darling'."

Lord Attenborough (above), so-called "King of Luvvies"

"It's amazing how many people in politics lack a sense of humour."

Charlie Whelan, former aide to Chancellor Gordon Brown

"Ambition in politics is not a crime. It's part of the life blood of politics."

Jack Straw,

Home Secretary

"It is only in the union between two sexually different persons that the perfection of the individual can occur, in a synthesis of unity and of mutual psychic-physical completeness."

His Holiness Pope John Paul II

"The House of Lords is all very well provided you don't inhale."

Lady Castle, Labour peeress and former cabinet minister