“Whoever had said in the guidebooks that the bum bag was a sensible device against theft had lied; no single item of dressware ever invented cried out "mug me" more than a pouch of zip-up plastic suspended by your groin.”

“Men don't ask other men if they're getting home OK, they just assume that beneath the frail, weak exterior lurks a muscle-building kung fu master fearless of ever being mugged.”

“I spent the day with the pigeons, on a bench in Trafalgar Square, my bag of belongings huddled to my chest in case someone thought of taking them, and a pile of breadcrumbs at my feet. I let the pigeons congregate around me ... Eventually a local warden came up to me and said , "Sir, we ask people not to feed the pigeons," with such an expression of civic determination that I pretense not to understand English. Instead, I listed my way through various "eh?" sounds until, having exhausted his two words of French and three of Spanish, he concluded that since I was neither nationality, I wasn't worth the bother.”

“So...I suggest you try and get control over your more unusual nature, see if you can't coax those claws away, and I'll try very, very hard not to throw up over what's left of your shoes. How does that sound?”

“It was an excellent coat. It was long, grey, suspiciously blotched, smelt faintly of dust and old curries, went all the way down to my knees and overhung my wrists even when I stretched out my arms. It had big, smelly pockets, crunchy with crumbs, it boasted the remnants of a waterproof sheen, was missing a few buttons, and had once been beige. It was the coat that detectives down the ages had worn while trailing a beautiful, dangerous, presumably blond suspect in the rain, the coat that no one noticed, shapeless, bland and grey - it suited my purpose perfectly.”

“We were beginning to understand why, in pre-anaesthetic days, the Bible had stipulated that suicide was a sin. Anything other than the prospect of eternal damnation, and the human race would probably have done away with itself at the first sign of the dentist.”

“Offer me?" A shrill note of indignation entered her voice. "Young man, there are three things that make Britain great. The first is our inability at playing sports."How does that make Britain great?""Despite the certainty of loss, we try anyway with the absolute conviction that this year will be the one, regardless of all evidence to the contrary!"I raised my eyebrows, but that simply meant I could see my blood more clearly, so looked away and said nothing."The second," she went on, "is the BBC. It may be erratic, tabloid, under-funded and unreliable, but without the World Service, obscure Dickens adaptions, the Today Program and Doctor Who, I honestly believe that the cultural and communal capacity of this country would have declined to the level of the apeman, largely owing to the advent of the mobile phone!""Oh," I said, feeling that something was expected. "Oh" was enough."And lastly, we have the NHS!""This is an NHS service?" I asked incredulously."I didn't say that, I merely pointed out that the NHS makes Britain great. Now lie still.”