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 te… - Linda Smith

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.'

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'.

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'.