When you talk about Fred Astaire, you talk about heaven. What more can I say? - Fred Astaire

I don't think that I will plunge the nation into war by stating that Fred Astaire is the greatest tap-dancer in the world.

A very distinguished colleague began his criticism of this show by asking what is Mr Astaire's secret. May I suggest that the solution hangs on a little word of three letters? Mr Astaire's secret is that of the late Rudolph Valentino and of Mr Maurice Chevalier — sex, but sex so bejewelled and be-pixied that the weaker vessels who fall for it can pretend that it isn't sex at all but a sublimated projection of the Little Fellow with the Knuckles in His Eyes. You'd have thought by the look of the first night foyer that it was Mothering Thursday, since every woman in the place was urgent to take to her bosom this waif with the sad eyes and the twinkling feet.

I have had to do most of my choreography. I would say most of it, with help from various choreographers I have worked with.