“At Winchester we were discouraged from standing too close, from making, or seeking, personal disclosure. The other day I met a fellow Wykhamist - someone I'd known for forty years - and after the preliminaries, I said: 'Are you happy?'He took a pace back and squinted with surprise: 'Are you pulling my wire?' he said. 'That's none of your business'.At Winchester we were none of us each others business. We cracked on.”

“This afternoon I was sitting quietly with some twenty roughs when I noticed a sudden hush come over the room. I glanced nervously round and observed that forty pairs of eyes were on me...I was reading a book. They had never seen someone read a book before. They were like natives watching a white man shave.”

“Born 4th January 1935. Left school at 16 with one 'O' level in geography ( so I know my way round the world), but continued my education at the University of Real Life, than which, you will agree, there is none better.”

“Carlton, Sydney (1949-), painter and decorator. Those who argue that bestiality should be treated with understanding had a setback in 1998 when Carlton, a married man from Bradford, was sentenced to a year in prison for having intercourse with a Staffordshire bull terrier, named Badger. His defence was that Badger had made the first move. 'I can't help it if the dog took a liking to me,' he told the court. This was not accepted.”

“When aren't we acting?' he asked in his diary. 'When aren't we concealing? Would you like me to have been a fly on your wall yesterday? Did you do nothing shameful? Of course you did. The version of ourselves that we present to the world bears no resemblence to the truth. If we knew the truth about each other we could take noone seriously. There isn't one of us who could afford to be caught. That's all life is. Trying not to be found out.”

“I expect you (William Whitelaw) were as impressed as I was to read of the recent electrocution in Florida of a character called John Spenkelink in the electric chair. It seems that a full six minutes passed before Spenkelink was dead, during which time he hopped about like a prawn on a hot plate.”

“Questions, Hypothetical: Needn't be answered. No one knows why.Schools, Public: They teach you to stand on your own two feet. 'No doors on the lavatories. That sorts the men from the boys'.Snobbery, Inverted: The worst kind. No need to explain why.”