Oh God, the bed and breakfast! Why is it that British people can't cope with the idea of the paying guest? It's like you pay these people to stay the… - Linda Smith

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Oh God, the bed and breakfast! Why is it that British people can't cope with the idea of the paying guest? It's like you pay these people to stay there, but you try and act as inconspicuous as you possibly can. It's like no financial transaction's taken place. It's as though you've just imposed yourself off the street; and they think 'Who the fuck are you? You've not just paid me £25, have you, to stay here?' First you try the lounge – the TV lounge. Suddenly you are in Poland – martial law – because there's a curfew. You're watching a film; the telly goes off at 11.30; a bloke standing over you, shouting 'I've got to get up at six o'clock this morning. What time are you going to bed?' – 'All right, yes; we're going now; we're going now.' You go up to bed with a sinking heart, which sinks even further when you open the door and find – ughh! - the MAUVE CANDLEWICK BEDSPREAD! Now this is a bad sign, because it is now on the cards that you are going to open up that bed and find MAUVE NYLON SHEETS. You get in there, and it's like sleeping between two pieces of velcro.

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About Linda Smith

Linda Smith (25 January 1958 – 27 February 2006) was a British stand-up comic and comedy writer.

Also Known As

Birth Name: Linda Helen Smith

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Additional quotes by Linda Smith

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!'

So that's my home town, and I come from a perfectly ordinary working-class family; and in fact, I didn't really meet middle-class people until I went to university. It was quite a shock, really. People were saying things like 'Well, I was always going to end up doing English, because I was brought up surrounded by books - brought up in a house full of books'; and I'd think 'Yes, so was I; but they were full of Green Shield stamps'. I suppose we could have swapped them for books, but we had our eye on a twin-tub.
I say ordinary, but there was one thing a little bit different about my family, in that my mum and dad were quite a bit older than people normally are when they start a family. And there was a downside to that, really. Well, for a start, all my friends' parents were just slightly older than them, and really trendy and dressed in cool clothes, and dropping them off at the bus and going 'Ciao!' I used to dream of 'Ciao!', because my mum's catchphrase on the bus was 'Thank you, driver'.

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