Citations

What I approved of with Margaret Thatcher was first of all that her high-camp quality was quite wonderful, especially after she had received voice training, and had this swooping contralto, with the occasional turns of basso profundo when she really got going.

Women are not a panacea, they don't bring a miracle, they don't do mysterious good.

Some of our very worst ministers have been women. Please let's confront this. We had Estelle Morris, who at least had the merit of realising she couldn't do the job and resigned within a year. It's true, she knew she couldn't do it. And we had Jacqui Smith, who with intensely strong competition is probably the worst Home Secretary ever.

My sense in politics is that successful women are at least as brutal and nasty as the successful men, and Margaret Thatcher's an outstanding example.

The BBC is in many ways wonderful, but it is not good at recognising when a programme has come to the end of its natural life. Programmes are like weeds - they spring up, grow quickly, and then should be allowed to die quickly. I think the BBC needs to be much more adventurous. I am horrified by this appetite they have for relaunches and remakes. They should be thinking about doing something new.

Why do Englishmen like sitting on the fence so much? Because they enjoy the sensation.

The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion and black and white boys and girls operate in this language together. This language which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has been intruded in England and that is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.

[on Enoch Powell] His prophesy was absolutely right in one sense. The Tiber did not foam with blood but flames lambent, they wrapped around Tottenham and wrapped around Clapham. But it wasn't inter-community violence. This is where he was absolutely wrong. What has happened is that a substantial section of the chavs [...] have become black.

Listen to David Lammy, an archetypal successful black man. If you turn the screen off so that you are listening to him on radio you would think he was white.