Quotes of the day - 2 October 2008

"I don't know what I would do if I stopped. I would just go to seed" - Sir David Attenborough, saying he has no plans to retire.

"Flirtation, fun and frottage are so much more rejuvenating than a facelift. The truth is, ageing is nothing more than a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it don't matter" - Best-selling novelist Kathy Lette.

"Shirley MacLaine would deliberately discomfit me. She once flicked open my shirt button, and said 'We pop them off and the wives sew them back on"' - Sir Michael Parkinson.

"Whereas Tony Blair always seemed to be masquerading as a human being, David Cameron sounds and behaves like the real thing" - Former Fleet Street editor Sir Max Hastings.

"She's very ignorant. Ignorance is an American characteristic. To me, Sarah Palin and John McCain look like a poster for a San Diego news channel" - Film-maker Oliver Stone on the Republican presidential hopeful and his running mate.

"I treat it pretty much as the last household chore of the day" - Billy Connolly on sex.

"No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it. Whereas monstrous amounts of wealth lead only in one direction - to the degradation, to whatever degree, of the person involved" - Felix Dennis, publisher and poet.

"She is so hot. There's something about her that drives me wild. She's so sexy and enchanting, just look at her form. They're going to have to hold me back when we start work. I'll be all over her. I don't know how I'll get any work done" - Russell Brand on working with Dame Helen Mirren.

"I'm happy getting my kit off if the role requires it. I've bared my bum before, no problem" - Actor Simon Pegg.

"I am just obsessed with that man" - Rory Bremner on Robert Peston, the BBC's flamboyant business editor, adding that "there aren't many interesting politicians around".