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" In 1997, the Labour government set out to strengthen funding for the arts - and achieved it. "

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" I was the only BBC graduate trainee in 1961 interested in arts broadcasting. I knew I wanted to write, and I had to make a living. "

" That's why writing is important to me. Time goes past, and you've been somewhere and come back that hasn't hurt you, and you've been somebody else. "

" A structure is a bit like a story. People will go along with you - they see where you're going. "

" Grime reminds me, if there is an echo, of sort of near enough like Liverpool in the very early Sixties. It's a lot of kids obsessed with music - obsessed with it. "

" There are two big beasts in the arts: the BBC and Sky Arts - challenging, leading the way. "

" Miliband failed us, his Labour supporters. And Labour will now, because of him, be in a disaster zone for a long time. "

" If you look at the creative economy in this country, it's per capita way bigger than any other in the world. "

" We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class... and now people like me are in the House of Lords. "

" I enjoy writing. Would I rather be playing golf? No. Would I rather be fishing? No. "

" It was my idea for high culture and popular culture to be treated equally. "

Popular Culture

" The success of the arts has come through a mix of public subsidy, substantial private support, and good box-office receipts, but central to Labour's post-1997 programme has been a determination to increase access as much as excellence. "

" Once, the arts were opera, ballet, classical music, and everything else deemed highbrow. "

" I love writing, and I love making arts programmes. "

" If I meet pals, we do hug each other, and it's very nice, you know... it's something that's come on me late and became second nature, and it's first nature now! "

" I don't go around thinking I'm attractive or not attractive. It has never occurred to me. People don't think like that where I come from... No one has ever said, 'Oh, he's a good-looking bloke.' They just didn't use those words about men. "

" In an arts programme, my job was to go where the talent was. And the talent was in popular culture. "

" Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly. "

" What artists are doing, and what people who are receiving the arts are doing, is entering into this agreement to occupy a parallel world. The parallel world is ever-expanding. We used to think that it existed only for people who were wealthy, well-born, or educated. It isn't like that. "

" There's a lot of hours in the week if you use them properly. "

" Work is a great blotter up. It stops you thinking, which is useful. No, it stops you feeling. "

" Is it rather stupid and dangerous to take Magna Carta so much for granted, as many of us seem to do, and to think of this attitude as 'very English?' "

" One of the great things about making 'Reel History' was meeting British people from all over the class system. It made me realise that London is a different country. "

" I decided years ago that I am just unfashionable. "

" Well, I don't think I'm good-looking... I know people who are good-looking, and I'm not good-looking. "

" Like university science departments, the arts have shown how they can earn their way and point to an economically newborn future for this country. They show that the U.K. could be a prime provider of imaginative riches and intellectual adventure, which I think are the two great prizes of the 21st century. "

" Now, perfectly ordinary people will give each other hugs. I mean, it used to be that a hug was reserved for if you came back from Australia - you know, back in the '40s and '50s. "

" I actually admire some of the books by a lot of the writers who write magic realism very much, but it's not for me. It's not what I can do, but even if I could, I don't really want to try. "

" The best of pop in our country is among the best of the arts that we do. And Britain does the arts as well as, and sometimes better than, anybody else on the planet. "

" I do think the BBC could do more, but I've always thought the BBC could do more - I think there should be more arts programmes full stop. "

" Class doesn't create culture anymore. "