Linda Smith Quotes

Rugby is a game for men with no fear of brain injury.

People say 'Ooh, doesn't Lionel Blair look good for his age?' Well, no, not really – not unless he's about five hundred. Otherwise he looks like nothing more than an elaborately coiffured scrotum.

Maltesers have the less-fattening centre. Well, yes, but they are covered in chocolate! That's like saying 'I'll have a mineral water, please. Can you put some cubes of lard in it?'

I sort of sympathise with them looking for weapons of mass destruction, because I'm like that with scissors. Honestly, I just turn the house upside down. Of course the difference is, I know I have got some scissors.

[A]nd between this top-quality programming are the most miserable adverts in the world – former Mancunian top cop John Stalker trying to sell you sun awnings; trying to get you to blot out every ray of light from the world for those in the grip of manic depression – 'Hello, I'm John Stalker. Are you, like me, tired of the pitiless glare of an English summer; maddened by the relentless gaze of cruel Helios; sick of lurking in your house all summer long, like a mad bloke in a siege situation - such as I would have dealt with in my high-flying career? Well, suffer no longer. Install Gloom Master sun awnings - summer bang to rights!' Terrible! Then it all gets worse with those terrible loan adverts. These awful, tragic, hollow-eyed wraiths come on, telling you these awful stories - 'I'm up to my eyes in debt, and, curiously, no reputable company would give me another loan! Then I discovered Dodgy Bastards. They've given me a million pounds, and all they want in return are my kidneys.' No, don't do it! And then - worse than that - the accident insurance adverts - 'Where there's blame, there's a claim' - when people who've had these accidents come on like medieval beggars, and wave their stumps at you for money with these outlandish stories - 'I slipped on a banana skin and successfully sued the Dominican Republic...'

People knock ASBOs but you have to bear in mind they are the only qualification some of these kids are going to get.

Turn for some crumb of comfort to the Labour Party? Forget it! The Labour Party seem to be packaging themselves like a pack of toilet paper, at the moment – sort of going for this pastel-politics look; this sort of Labour, Little Rose; a kind of tampon that uses the same logo, called 'Femmes'. Perhaps it would be even less socialist to call themselves Labs; Labies: 'Safe, strong, soft Neil Kinnock, absorbs all kinds of shit except socialism. Expands width-wise to include everybody.'

For the Government, it is quite hard for them to find media faces – to find people to head up campaigns – because they are all so weird-looking, aren't they? They all look like Muppets who have been left too close to a radiator. I don't like to mock the afflicted, but how did anyone know that Willie Whitelaw had had a stroke? What genius spotted that? I mean, with most people it's quite a dramatic change, isn't it? But what happened? Someone thought 'Oh, Willie's dribbled an extra pint today. What's going on? We'll run a few tests'.

[Of a recipe for Chilli Con Carne] English people may like to substitute a sponge cake at this point. (Series 1, Episode 6)

London water – it’s hard but fair.

This is Prince Charles & Camilla. Or, as I like to think of them, Rod Hull & Emu.

[On Ainsley Harriott] I must admit, I tend to think - with Ainsley - if you're that happy, you haven't really understood the world. You see, I think that cheeriness is all very well. Beyond a certain point it becomes quite offensive. And how many versions of what is, basically, your dinner can Ainsley do? There must be executives stalking the corridors of White City, thinking 'We need a new idea for Ainsley. He's so jolly. What can we have? We've had him doing Can't Cook, Won't Cook, Ready Steady Cook, Barbecues. We need something new, different, edgy. How about this? We like this. Ainsley's Death-Row Dinners. Yes, the jolly chef tours the condemned man with a last supper to remember. We can have the recipes in the Radio Times - Ainsley's Humanely Fried Chicken, with a lethal injection of butter! - guaranteed to make the governor say 'Pardon'.

So, anyway, I think I'll go visit my nan: knock on the door; she's in the kitchen there, bottling up little gingham-top jars of racial hatred. So, I think 'Right, I'll avoid anything that's going to provoke her, because there's no point arguing with someone who, strictly speaking, isn't even alive. So I'll keep off anything controversial'. But you can forget that, because you just get this monologue. The line of logic is harder to follow than the plot of Finnegans Wake:
'Hello, Nan.'
'Hello, our Lin, it's lovely to see you. Come in. I hate blacks. Come in. Sit down. I'll make you a nice cup of tea, our Lin. I hate blacks. Come on in, our Lin. Would you like a nice piece of cake? I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I don't like black people.'
You think 'Oh Christ! Shut up! What can I do? What can I do to divert her from this monomania? Right, OK': 'Garden looks lovely, Nan.'
'Oh, yes, Lin; I like a bit of gardening - unlike black people, who I don't like at all.'
'I think it's gonna rain.'
'So do I, Linda, I also think President Botha should be running this country.'

If God wanted us to believe in him, he'd exist.

And another thing I like about cricket is, because most of the commentators apart from Boycott and Trueman are very old-worldly, they have an innocence and naïveté about them, that makes them sometimes say, in the course of their commentary, inadvertently rude things: 'Now we're at the start of play, and we're coming in to play; and the bowler's Holding, the batman's Willey'; 'Here we are, and we're about to commence play. And there's Simpson, in his usual position, standing with his legs wide open, at first slip, waiting for a tickle.'