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" In a more intellectually rigorous age, I wouldn't be talked about as a satirist at all. I would just be a topical comedian. "

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" Maybe we like our politicians to appear like bumbling oafs. It certainly never did Ronald Reagan or George Bush any harm. The Italians still seem enamoured of Silvio Berlusconi - a man whose entry into a room is less likely to be greeted with the Italian national anthem than by the Benny Hill theme tune. "

" I don't think my life would be significantly poorer if I don't impersonate Nick Clegg. Life is short enough without sitting up night after night listening to tapes of him. "

" Location is everything, I'd rather camp in the Lake District or Scotland than sit in a five-star hotel in Frankfurt. "

" British politics is more nuanced. Part of the problem with New Labour is that they are a moving target. "

" But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair. "

" I'm supposed to be the director of a television company, but I've only ever seen that company as a vehicle for making the kind of programmes we wanted to make, getting our ideas on the screen. "

" If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it. "

" It is a weird thing, because most people tend to get more conservative as they get older, but I find myself going the opposite way. I am sure that by the end I will be selling Marxist pamphlets on the Holloway Road. "

" I remember driving home one evening while they were reviewing the papers on the radio. One of the articles was about me separating from my wife. It's a weird thing to listen to a news report about the break-up of your marriage. "

" So to recap: we may or may not be going to war with Iraq because Saddam may or may not have weapons of mass destruction, which he may or may not use, or pass to other terrorists groups with whom he may or may not have links. "

" When I first met Tony Blair in 1996, he was open and idealistic, keen to bring a breath of fresh air to government. But something happened - was it just the arrogance of power? - that narrowed Labour's vision from purposeful reform and investment, to peevish and petulant pragmatism. "

" I am just fascinated by this reassurance from a menacing figure. It is rather frightening. "

" When I was growing up, there were just the three channels, so as a nation we all sat down to the same meal at the end of the day. Now there's been this explosion. "

" Now I'm instantly nervous about the demands of doing a weekly column. "

" Genealogy is among the fastest-growing leisure pursuits in the U.K. Indeed, the urge to uncover the truth about our ancestors has proved so compelling that, when the 1901 census first went online, the website crashed after a million people logged on within hours of its launch. "

" When you consider what Tony Blair was saying about liberty, human rights and that sort of thing, it would be terribly revolutionary to sell the speeches he and Jack Straw made in 1994. "

" People may say that what I do is very clever, but it's not really at all. It's not Swift. "

" Or the Department of Education and another ministry were worried about duplication of effort, so what did they do? They set up two committees to look into duplication and neither knew what the other was up to. It really is a world beyond parody. "

" For such a small country, Britain packs in an amazing diversity of landscapes: coastline, lakes, mountains, rolling countryside, villages and great cities. "

" Politics now is rather like going into Starbucks for a coffee. "

" I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education. "

" I've no idea what they make of me. People usually don't recognise themselves in an impression. "

" My first public impression was my French teacher, Derek Swift. "

" A lot of what I do - I have to try and make sense of things before I can make nonsense of them. "