Quotes

I am not being seen in Parliament every day and being tested. My political career is slipping behind.

Michael Portillo, when asked about his prospects of leading the Conservative party

I want the next part of my life to be a different shape.

Liberal Democrat MP Jackie Ballard who has started on a strict diet

Some of my best friends are primates.

Genetics expert Professor Steve Jones

The cruellest end for a fox cub is to be taken up by gooey-eyed animal sentimentalists, given a cage and a little bit of garden, patted on the head and called "foxy-woxy".

Auberon Waugh

The best way to end a canteen culture is to spend a little more time outside the canteen.

Chris Mullin MP on the Metropolitan Police

The great Bagehot remarked that in 1802 every hereditary monarch in the world was insane. In this year of grace, I do not want to lay such a charge against the entire European Commission, but there is a manic quality to its thinking.

Tory MP and ex-Cabinet minister Peter Brooke

That's our good friends and allies the Americans. You just have to laugh at them.

Charles Baker-Cresswell, son of the Royal Navy captain whose vessel captured the German Enigma machine, on Universal Studios' plan to make the ship American in a new film