Ian Hislop Quotations

This job certainly doesn't win you a huge amount of friends, I accept that, but it is very enjoyable, and deep down I think it's probably quite a worthwhile job.

My mother was a terrific force in my life. Wartime-generation woman, hadn't gone to university but should have done. Was very funny, very verbal, very clever, very witty.

All the libel lawyers will tell you there's no libel any more, that everyone's given up.

I like making films about old people because they are repositories of amazing stories that they tell well. And they're incredibly good telly.

I've seen the Pokemon movie, which is probably the worst movie ever made on any subject ever.

I get paid to do what I enjoy, not that common a condition.

It is no longer acceptable in British politics to be fat or eccentric or religious.

The best comedy is where you attack the strong, not the weak.

You can't understand Twenties England until you appreciate it was under a cloud of mourning. Nearly everyone was grieving.

Internet journalism is not a world we know very well at all. It's conducted more on the screen and less in bars, which makes it rather less useful for getting stories about people throwing up over one another, which is what one's after.

They may well say not only is this not true, but I will put in an injunction to prevent publication. No, stories don't go in unless I'm convinced by the people who write them that they're true. And if I'm wrong, then so be it.

You have a huge amount of confidence when you're younger, which slowly ebbs away for the rest of your life. You think: 'No problem. I can do that. Why shouldn't I do it?'

I've got a very peculiar sort of fame, based on being on the telly. It doesn't mean you have the lifestyle people expect.

I'm often accused of being prudish, but the opposite is true.

No, there are no hard and fast rules about sources, no printed booklet to help journalists through.

For a long time I thought I should be a civil engineer. That seemed to be the only thing worth doing, and I chose the wrong subjects at A-level. I read all the sciences to start with, and then had to admit, 'This isn't what I want to do' and changed course.

I'd always assumed that I would die at about the same age as my dad - he was 45. I am five years in credit now. I can't get my head around the fact that I am older than he was - ever.

There's an awful lot of terrible television which I could do, but I mostly stick to Have I Got News for You.

I should go on Mastermind, answering questions on the life and times of Jeffery Archer. I'd get more questions right than he would!

The Tories are still game, but it's almost impossible to get anyone from Labour on. Perhaps we'll get a few more Labour rebels now.

They obviously couldn't get the two of them to be happy in the room together at the same time

In Britian we have a free press. It's not a pretty press, but it's free. The people who can't bear the Daily Mail, they say: 'you should ban it'. No no, no no, you don't ban it... you don't buy it.

Modest about our national pride - and inordinately proud of our national modesty.

England Their England by AG Macdonell which was written in the thirties and is about a young Scotsman who's got shell shocked during the First World War… I love it.

I do have a residual belief that, if at all possible, you should try not to mock the weak

You end up with this succession of periods when everything was marvellous - from King Arthur to the medieval times, Ivanhoe, chivalry, Henry VIII, Merry England, the Blitz