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It absolutely delights me that I have not lost the power to give the deepest possible offence - Barry Humphries, creator of Dame Edna Everage, who was thrown out of a Van Gogh exhibition in Australia for going with a heavily bandaged ear

I think I'm an altogether more sophisticated and complicated person than others think I am - Kenneth Clarke

The Pope reads my books and I read his encyclicals, and that is about it - the writer Paul Johnson, in a letter to the 'Spectator'

The Foreign Secretary has become a liability. Endless photo-opportunities and policy soundbites do not make up a foreign policy - Sir John Nott, former Tory Defence Secretary

Children are often more adult about recycling - Lewis Bronze, 'Blue Peter' editor, in evidence to a House of Commons select committee on recycling

We in Westminster speak a language only we understand, doing things at best irrelevant to the lives of people we are supposed to be serving - Paddy Ashdown, leader of the Liberal Democrats

I thought the little bugger was dead - Andrew Waylen, father of two-day-old Charlie Waylen, who was abducted from a hospital in Bath and later found safe and well

I can't wait to give vent to my unpleasant side - Cliff Richard, on playing the title role in the musical 'Heathcliff'

The editor did it while I was away. It was so popular we left it there . . . One day it will come out - Rupert Murdoch on how the Page 3 feature in the 'Sun' began

Perhaps it is becoming dated but the general public will miss it and I think there will be an outcry - Linda Lusardi, former Page 3 girl