If the assembled company rags you for a failing, you can usually play up to it for comic effect: it's the failing they don't mention that you have to… - Clive James

Riding the crest, I diversified, exploiting a highly marketable capacity to fart at will... By mastering this skill I set myself on a par with those court jesters of old who could wow the monarch and all his retinue with a simultaneous leap, whistle and fart. Unable to extend my neo-Homeric story-telling activities from the playground to the classroom, I could nevertheless continue to hog the limelight by interpolating a gaseous running commentary while the teacher addressed himself to the blackboard.

The new Germany is a democracy. So was the old Germany, or it tried to be: but then the Nazis got on, and Hell broke loose. It can break loose anywhere: all people have hellish propensities.

The repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics.