Linda Smith Quotes

[On the prospect of Margaret Thatcher's death] Be serious - this is just a fantasy, because if she were killed, would it actually make any difference? Would things get any better? Course they wouldn't; don't kid yourself. They'd get worse, because she would become a martyr – this monetarist martyr - a cult figure, like Eva Peron. Can you imagine the televised funeral? There she'd be, laid out in a glass coffin, in the blue gear, the hair-do and all the rest of it. She'd be laying there just really life-like - just like she was in life - a bit warmer. It would be on the telly. You thought Winston Churchill was bad; you can imagine what this would be like. And then, of course, it wouldn't stop at that. There would be films - The Night Brighton Rocked. There'd be musicals. Tim Rice would be churning out the musicals about her life - Magita. There'd be Elaine Page belting out the big numbers: 'Don't Cry for Me, Barnet Finchley'.

It'd be ludicrous, because the idea of the British Empire is such an outmoded idea. The British Empire now, if it were a being, would be living out its days in some sunshine home on the South Coast, wouldn't it? - boring the tits off everyone, shuffling around in oversize slippers, boring everyone with their press cuttings of when they were famous: 'Ooh look! ooh yes! I was very popular in the world once. Ooh yes! I went all over the world. Look, you see here; they loved me here - Sri Lanka. Of course, we used to call that Ceylon. Now, let me see; what have we here? Oh yes! they loved us there - Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe! Of course, we didn't call it Zimbabwe then. It was Rhodesia. Rhodesia, you see? And this; oh, this marvelous tour I had here - now what was it? India! India - what did we used to call that? Oh yes... Ours!'

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

He force-fed his daughter with some mechanically recovered beef fragments [...] on TV to show there was no danger from BSE. [...] She's probably a teenager now. Most teenagers just irrationally hate their parents. You wouldn't want to be round their house of a Christmas: 'Let's watch that film, when you tried to kill me. Yes I would like a flat, thank you.'

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'.

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.'

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?'

Clive Anderson: Don't give him the oxygen of publicity.
Smith: I'm not that happy with him having the oxygen of oxygen, actually. He's been released to the - I must say - somewhat cryogenic embrace of Mary. He went forth - a big great snog - and she just swerved in a way that none of our English Cricket Team are able to do. The message was loud and clear. You've heard this many times from prostitutes, Jeffrey. No kissing!

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

I do admire Van Gogh - I do think he was one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived. He did some very silly things. Top of the list, famously – after a row with Gaugin - absolutely ripped to the tits on absinthe – girlfriend had left him – so, he chopped his ear off and sent it to her. Do you think she came back? Do you think that did the trick? Hasn't really caught on, has it? For a start, you wouldn't try that trick today with our post, would you? Six months later, she'd be saying 'Ooh! a sun-dried tomato!' And what was he thinking? What was this girl going to do? Open up this package, fish out this lug, and go 'Ooh, Vinny! I thought you were all mad and driven and weird and a loner, and our relationship was doomed, and you go and do a lovely thing like this. Ooh, you know how to get round me. I SAID, YOU KNOW HOW TO GET ROUND ME!'

[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...'

As Linda drifted in and out of consciousness, her fellow comedian Mark Steel noticed Joan Collins on the television. “I was on a chat show with Joan Collins,” he told fellow comedian Andy Hamilton. "How old is she?" Hamilton asked. "I think she must be close to 75," replied Steel. From beneath the pile of bedclothes a little voice piped up: “How much is that in human years?”

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.

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.'

[On her home town in Kent:] Erith isn't twinned with anywhere but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham.