Paul Merton: (on the subject of people wearing bow-ties) People wear bow-ties because it's show-business, isn't it? I mean there's Bernard Manning th… - Linda Smith

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!'

[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'.

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.