"I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education."

"I'm supposed to be the director of a television company, but I've only ever seen that company as a vehicle for making the kind of programmes we wanted to make, getting our ideas on the screen."

"If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it."

"Or the Department of Education and another ministry were worried about duplication of effort, so what did they do? They set up two committees to look into duplication and neither knew what the other was up to. It really is a world beyond parody."

"My first public impression was my French teacher, Derek Swift."

"I remember driving home one evening while they were reviewing the papers on the radio. One of the articles was about me separating from my wife. It's a weird thing to listen to a news report about the break-up of your marriage."

"When I was growing up, there were just the three channels, so as a nation we all sat down to the same meal at the end of the day. Now there's been this explosion."

"I've no idea what they make of me. People usually don't recognise themselves in an impression."

"When you consider what Tony Blair was saying about liberty, human rights and that sort of thing, it would be terribly revolutionary to sell the speeches he and Jack Straw made in 1994."

"We are rather in the position that used to exist at the BBC, where you feel that you can pick up the phone to people who are experts in their field and they will be very favourably disposed to you and share their knowledge."

"In a more intellectually rigorous age, I wouldn't be talked about as a satirist at all. I would just be a topical comedian."

"Now I'm instantly nervous about the demands of doing a weekly column."

"British politics is more nuanced. Part of the problem with New Labour is that they are a moving target."

"But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair."

"I am just fascinated by this reassurance from a menacing figure. It is rather frightening."

"It is a weird thing, because most people tend to get more conservative as they get older, but I find myself going the opposite way. I am sure that by the end I will be selling Marxist pamphlets on the Holloway Road."

"People may say that what I do is very clever, but it's not really at all. It's not Swift."

"Politics now is rather like going into Starbucks for a coffee."