Harry Enfield Quotes

At the end of every series, I think I won’t do any more. But as long as I can think of fresh stuff, I can keep going.

I don’t think I know anyone who would go around going, ‘That’s a good idea for a gag.’

Like all extremely nice people, I tend to be on the side of the underdog, or at least feel sorry for him.

I have dealings with a pension firm, an insurance company and a bank, and every day one of these institutions tries to worry me into buying something else. The bank wants to sell me a pension, the pension company wants to sell me insurance for my pension and the insurance company wants to insure my bank account.

There’s nothing nicer than a wicked bad person in a story is there? It’s fun.

I’d like to play a larger-than-life character done straight, like Clouseau. To move away from Dick Emery and towards Peter Sellers.

What Paul and I do is not fashionable – it’s a load of silly characters mucking about.

When I was on ‘Top Gear’ they thought it was funny I used to have a Vauxhall Cavalier convertible.

I like Hugh Grant.

Sometimes I have really good ideas, but it is always Paul’s language that makes them work. Without him I’d be more clinical, more mundane. What I achieve with him is different to any thing I could ever hope to achieve with any one else.

I don’t mind what the critics say, but I don’t generally read them. I’m more concerned with viewing figures.

I tried for about a year to write a teenage character until I finally got the phrase ‘he has lost the power of rational thought and the use of his arms.’ Everything else came from that.

In the 1970s the government propped up managers who couldn’t run their industries properly. Nowadays they prop up our lousy managers who can’t run our services properly.

I played Nelson Mandela in one thing for laughs – and I did it because this thing had come round from the BBC that we couldn’t do it any more.

When I saw ‘The Office’ I thought, ‘That’s it for our type of humour. This has changed comedy for ever.’ I loved it.

I’m nothing like Michael Barrymore.

In the early ’80s when I came to London, I didn’t like opera. I didn’t know anything about it.

Writing scripts is fine because you get through a page quickly. But writing words just reminds me of school. To me a novel would be like writing a 300-page essay.

When looking for an Oscar-winning performance Americans demand not mental instability but mental disability, ie Tom Hanks playing a simpleton or Dustin Hoffman as an autistic man. The Yanks are suckers for such patronising tosh.

You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face if you try to be self-consciously cutting-edge.

When I was 15 my great Aunt Nancy gave me a book of Alan Bennett plays, and I thought he was the bees knees.

Someone said that the good thing about my TV programme was that it had so many tics, which I think are the subtle little touches of originality that Paul brings to it.

No, I can’t write a novel. I don’t have a story.

Every day I get something in the post telling me to worry about something else. Worry mail is big business.

Everyone’s come up against a snob or a know-all.

When I come up with a character, I know how he lives and breathes.

I’m trying to stop reading the Daily Telegraph. I’ve read it for several years because I prefer to read a pro-Government newspaper that slags the Government off, which the Telegraph frequently does, than an anti-government one or a trying-oh-so-hard-to-be-neutral one.

I have a dear friend called Kate St John who is a musical genius.

Computers are dangerous.

I’ve never felt cutting-edge. Maybe Loadsamoney was for a few months, but after that I’ve just done family stuff.

Little Britain’ happened and it was so deliciously uncool.

I was a nice child.

It’s good fun making commercials because you are picked up in a posh car and pampered all day by your personal pamperer, or ‘runner’ as they are known in the business.

Comedians are like pop bands. When you’re young, you have ruddy principles and don’t do old stuff because you don’t want to take away the purity of youth. But then as you get older, you look at The Rolling Stones and see what fun they have.

All children try to manipulate their parents, but their tactics are different, and women seem better able to cope with the tactics of girls than of boys.

The danger of being in fashion is that one day you’ll be out of fashion.

I’m not very good at acting. Overacting is what I do.

I was brought up a Roman Catholic, so when I was a child I was frogmarched to church every Sunday.

I can understand why people don’t like fox hunting, but I really can’t see why anyone other than vegans can object to game shooting.

Like most lapsed Catholics, I will probably return to the fold when I start to fear death.

I’m a legend. Me and Vauxhall Astras. We’re legends.

I’ve been deeply involved in writing garbage since I was 16.

I don’t understand why the Euro-sceptics think monetary union will lead to a federal Europe. It seems to me that the opposite is the case.

With three of my own children, I have witnessed first-hand the vital role reading has played as part of their childhood and I am passionate that all children learn the skills they need to experience the joy of a good book.

I’ve got three very expensive kids and I had to buy a house in Notting Hill.

If people like you, and you disappoint them, they get very hurt by it.

I don’t want my kids talked about. It’s one of the reasons I thought that if I could just make a go of being a writer, that would be good, because I don’t really want my kids growing up with me famous.

The most confident people in Britain are those who went to top public schools and Trotskyists.

I was once asked to be a guest presenter on ‘The Big Breakfast’ for a week while Chris Evans was away, but I said no as I knew I’d be hopeless. If they asked me to guest present the ‘Today’ programme on Radio 4, however, I’d jump at the chance.

The older generation may see us as plucky little Britain, on the Edge of Europe. But more and more of the post-war generation see Britain as a less beautiful, more cramped, more snobbish, less glamorous version of America.

Why is everyone so obsessed with attracting the young? The Telegraph, Radio 4 – everyone wants a younger audience when everyone knows the population is getting older and older, and that older people have more dosh than young people.

You can be a bit more naughty with a live show.

Public schoolboys are brought up to assume they should lead society, and Trotskyists know they are right about absolutely everything.

Men seem to relate to boys better, sharing their interests in whizzing about and football and car-cars and other moronic activities.

If I go to Liverpool, everyone’s really nice to me. But when we do ‘Scousers’ I portray Liverpudlians as a bunch of thieving, unemployed, violent wastrels, which is a really terrible thing to do.