Quotes from Mike Ashley

On a scale out of five, with one being very bad and five being very good, House of Fraser is a one.

I am hopeful for the Newcastle fans, for the club, for everybody that I will be able to step aside and we will be able to get an owner in that will please everybody.

It's one of the amazing things about owning a football club, the way you get caught up. It's like someone has put something in your coffee. You look around, you want to lift the place, hit the ground running.

I take business decisions all day every day, from home, from the bath.

People will say 'how can you have a plane when your workers are on minimum wage?' I said 'but I don't set the minimum wage.' If the minimum wage would be the living wage, then the Government who set the rules should set it at the living wage. That's how I look at it.

The school I went to was only famous for one thing... Peter Osgood went to that particular school. That's probably my earliest memory of the importance of football.

Sports Direct should come with a government health warning - this stock is not for the fainthearted.

I'm not this crazy capitalist everybody thinks I am.

I don't get paid a salary, but I do like to go by private plane because it saves a lot of time and is very efficient.

I'm not a clicks man, I wasn't born in the clicks era. I'm a bricks man, I believe in bricks.

Corbyn is not only a liar but clueless.

The media circus surrounding Sports Direct... only proves that whatever progress Sports Direct makes, it will always be subject to disproportionate scrutiny and misrepresentation.

The over-riding reality is that I am just not wealthy enough to own Newcastle.

It's not my fault the high street is dying... It's very very simple, the Internet is killing the high street.

It is very boring and lonely in Shirebrook. You know what we do after work? We go to the pub after work.

If you're trying to portray that I take massive business decisions in pubs and bars, then that is total crap. It is not the norm, otherwise I'd have to live in a pub because I take business decisions all day, every day.

I was a little bit shocked at quite how football was more like the wild west.

I do fly to work by helicopter. It's a reality.

Do I regret getting into football? The answer is yes. I have had tonnes of fun in it but I haven't been able to make the difference I wanted to like I have at Sports Direct.

Criticism is a funny thing, because I think if you want to be something, create something or make a difference in any walk of life you have to be hugely self-critical.

I would not get to know every single thing that happens in Sports Direct.

Despite significant challenges within the retail sector in the UK and beyond, which have resulted in many retailers failing, Sports Direct has continued to perform well and exceed market expectations.

Once you start to spiral a company down, you lose the momentum.

You get to the top of one mountain and then you see another.