I'm always amazed to hear of air crash victims so badly mutilated that they have to be identified by their dental records. What I can't understand is, if they don't know who you are, how do they know who your dentist is?

My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I've endured over the past twenty-five years.

I'm always amazed to hear of air crash victims so badly mutilated that they have to be identified by their dental records. What I can't understand is, if they don't know who you are, how do they know who your dentist is?

On my first day in New York a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When I told him I didn't he said, 'Do you mind if I mug you here?'.

All disc jockeys are without talent. Noel Edmonds - I can't stand Noel Edmonds.

Am I allowed to call myself working-class now? Because obviously I'm now very rich.

And like the old stereotype, I overcame my shyness by making my friends laugh.

At one point in the mid-Eighties I shared a promoter with the Smiths. One night, we were sitting backstage when Morrissey burst in, utterly distraught, sobbing his heart out. Turns out someone had thrown a sausage at him on stage during 'Meat Is Murder.'

Beginning with a trip out to Ellis Island, I saw for myself where thousands of European immigrants took their first steps onto American soil, bringing with them nothing but their ambition: people such as Erich von Stroheim and Adolph Zukor.

Generally speaking, politicians are an odd bunch. They seem to have very thick skins and genuinely don't care what people think. And charm is a very important part of the politician's armoury. I try to resist that kind of charm.

I don't always vote in general elections, but I think I've always voted Labour.

I looked at longevity in show business when I was about 13, and the people who seemed to have longevity were the ones who'd spent quite a bit of time learning about what they were doing before they made it.

I really don't take any interest at all in contemporary comedy.

I remember being fascinated by the very nature of comedy from the age of 10; why is this funny, and that isn't?

I think having an outsider's viewpoint is interesting and good, especially for a comedian.

I was trying to organise my DVDs into a sort of chronological order, and I am afraid that it all trailed off after the Sixties.

I've never been disappointed by politicians. I've never invested that much in them in the first place.

In 1986, I was attacked in the street as I helped Neil Mullarkey from the Comedy Store Players to put up posters. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time - midnight - and we were English. I got kicked in the head.

In 1987, I was in Edinburgh doing my first one-man show. I took part in a kickabout with some fellow comedians and tripped over my trousers and heard this cracking sound in my leg. A couple of days later I went into a coma and was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism.

In fact, I don't watch a lot of contemporary comedy for fear of being influenced by it.

Maybe there's a perception of me as grumpy old bugger who suffers from depression. It's a total misconception. I don't think of myself as any grumpier than the next person. I'm not even grumpy first thing in the morning.

The thing about improvisation is that it's not about what you say. It's listening to what other people say. It's about what you hear.

Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way.

When I turned about 12 or 13, I realised that being funny wasn't about remembering jokes. It was about creating them.

When I used to do the Edinburgh Festival, there was a bunch of guys selling fresh oysters and I'd eat ten daily - marvellous.

When I wake up on a Monday morning and I realise I don't have to go and work at the civil service, I really think I've won.

When I was nine I spent a lot of my time reading books about the history of comedy, or listening to the Goons or Hancock, humour from previous generations.

They know they're going to look beautiful, and I don't think women should look like costumes. They shouldn't look like fashion victims.

A lot of victims, for example, have become addicted to alcohol and drugs. It seems to me that the church's healing ministry is going to be enhanced through this in much broader strokes. That's good, it's all positive.

We are really the victims of our own problems.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the victims and heroes of September 11th. As we commemorate the anniversary of 9-11, we must also remember that the threat is still very real today.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

Most of the victims of Nazi aggression were before the war less well off than Germany. They should not be expected by Germany to bear, unaided, the major costs of Nazi aggression.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

All serial killers want to win. They choose victims they can kill successfully.

We hear so much about weapons of mass destruction. But nine out of 10 war victims are killed by guns. It's the AK-47 that's a weapon of mass destruction.

Most of today's black convicts have come to understand that they are the most abused victims of an unrighteous order.

We as a Congress have a moral obligation to bring justice to the families of these victims. Furthermore, as a society based on laws, we have a responsibility to ensure that criminals don't go unpunished.

The word survivor suggests someone who has emerged alive from a plane crash or a natural disaster. But the word can also refer to the loved ones of murder victims, and this was the sense in which it was used at a four-day conference in early June at Boston College.

The primary victims of Katrina, those who were given the least help by the government, those rescued last or not at all, were overwhelmingly people of color largely hidden from the mainstream of society.

Cancer victims who don't accept their fate, who don't learn to live with it, will only destroy what little time they have left.

The East Timorese government does not believe that we should consider compensation for the victims because there are tens of thousands of people who were, in one way or another, affected by the violence either directly or indirectly.

When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.

Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.

We always see the innocent victims in the stories, and I am a little bored with that. I am much more interested in the price paid by the people who can fly.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

The generosity of the American public toward the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami has been reflected in the outpouring of support for the Pakistani earthquake victims.

I rise today to offer a formal and heartfelt apology to all the victims of lynching in our history, and for the failure of the United States Senate to take action when action was most needed.

We owe it to the flood victims of New Orleans to give them truthful answers as to why this event took place and to assure our citizens that tragedies like this will never happen again.