Jack: I once had a candidate who was deeply concerned about the moral issues raised by myxomatosis. 'Look mate,' I said, 'Rabbits, as far as I'm awar… - Dennis Potter

By the time I stood for Parliament I was already carrying a walking stick, and the combination of my illness and my sense of withdrawal from a belief in a kind of Britain I would have preferred to see meant that I was no longer satisfied with such a (political) role: it wasn't creative enough, it didn't satisfy me. I simply didn't fit the bill in the end. Although I was a Labour candidate I didn't even vote in that election. I was probably the only candidate who didn't vote for his party.

Nigel: Why the cheap jokes? Jack: Cheap? When I was a kid, we were made to stay away from school on Empire Days so we wouldn't have to wave one of those little Union Jacks. We were the richest country in the world then, or so I'm told, and my old man bow-legged from malnutrition. Us kids nearly died laughing.

You cannot make a pair of croak-voiced Daleks appear benevolent, even if you dress one of them in an Armani suit and call the other Marmaduke.