“Ronald Reagan was a man who knew the diplomatic form. He also had a showman’s ear for a tune. So when, at an official dinner, the marine band slipped into ‘Edelweiss’, he stopped mid-anecdote, rose to his feet, placed a… — A.A. Gill Copy Share Image
“I told them this was their language, this English, this most marvellous and expressive cloak of meaning and imagination. This great, exclamatory, illuminating song, it belonged to anyone who found it in their mouths. There was no wrong way to say it, or write it, the language couldn’t be compelled or herded, it couldn’t be tonsured or pruned, pollarded or… — A.A. Gill Copy Share
“Accent is the last great redoubt of prejudice. The race relations industry, that inquisition of fairness and sensitivity, doesn't protect against discrimination by funny… — A.A. Gill Copy Share Image
“The only type of humor that is excused lower classness is satire, and satire is the chamber music of comedy - a joke that… — A.A. Gill Copy Share Image
“Nobody knows exactly where the first chickens were domesticated – India, China, Thailand, Vietnam – somewhere around 10,000 years ago, which is to say at the birth of farming. The wild bird is a red jungle fowl, Gallus gallus (the French made it their national bird because of the similarity to Gaul, and because they still behave like chickens).” — A.A. Gill Copy Share
“There was a powerful and effulgent smell of industrial disinfectant. It's a smell that never reassures you about cleanliness; rather, it makes you doubly… — A.A. Gill Copy Share Image
“The Gulf is the proof of Carnegie’s warning about wealth: ‘There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing… — A.A. Gill Copy Share Image
“Ronald Reagan was a man who knew the diplomatic form. He also had a showman’s ear for a tune. So when, at an official… — A.A. Gill Copy Share Image
“Down a winding cobbled street from the church trips the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, the most evocative and strangely dramatic of all morris dances,… — A.A. Gill Copy Share Image
“Trojan is giving away Magnum large condoms (do you think they were named after a large wooden animal inside which thousands of little men… — A.A. Gill Copy Share Image
“There is no tragedy so utter that a Belgian, with the best will in the world, can’t make worse.” — A.A. Gill Copy Share Image
