Quotes from Gyles Brandreth

If you'd spent your life being called "Gyles Brandreth", you would crawl across broken glass to achieve the bliss, the simplicity, the purity, the joy of simply being called "Bob".

He loved what he did, he loved being on Countdown - he just loved life

When I was a boy, I began writing a biography of Shakespeare, and since then I've written a number of biographies of actors and famous people.

People confuse being full of words with being terribly intelligent and informed.

People are always asking me on to quizzes - they think I know all the answers because I burble on so, but I don't do terribly well.

For more than 40 years now, relentlessly, I have been pursuing brief encounters with the great and the good.

A chap can go too far in the pursuit of authenticity.

Long after Mae West is forgotten, her words will live on.

Business is not my forte.

'An Audience With Kenneth Williams.' My wife and I went with him to the recording. He was paid £10,000, the largest fee he had ever received and was so nervous he was shaking. But his performance was matchless. He knew it was the best thing he'd ever done.

A humorous quotation is a little window on the world that gives life a comic twist.

When you are standing in a corner at the party, when you've arrived early for the meeting, when the doors have closed but the lift won't start, there's nothing worse than being lost for words.

My introduction to the Queen was disconcerting, to say the least. 'This is Gyles Brandreth,' said the Duke of Edinburgh cheerily. 'Apparently, he's writing about you.'

If you're the Queen you don't need to say anything and you don't get into trouble. If you're the Duke of Edinburgh you say a lot of things, sometimes too many, and you do get into trouble.

Prince Philip had formally 'retired' in the summer of 2017, a couple of months after his 96th birthday, because the Queen encouraged him to do so. She wanted to stop him 'pushing himself all the time'. She had become anxious about him.

Prince Philip protected the Queen and made her laugh.

It was Napoleon who said if you want to understand a man, look at the world as it was when he was 20. When the Queen and the Duke were in their early 20s, it's around 1940. Their values are the values of Britain in 1940; all that is best of Britain in 1940 is exemplified by the Duke.

Bob Hope said: 'You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.' And while this quote is generally amusing, it is even more amusing when you know he said that when he was old.

If you are getting married it's about the person you are marrying, it's about the relationship. For me it's not about the party.

I learnt German as well as English, so by the time I was three my parents has already decided I was a gifted child.

Playing games can contribute to making you happy, perhaps even without therapy.

I wanted to have a house near his grave, and that's exactly what I did get. When I woke up in the morning, I would open my window and look out upon Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare's grave is. Not once did it fail to move me.

I think the Duke of Edinburgh would have been pleasantly surprised by the reaction to his death.

Prince Philip prides himself on being a realist. He knows he is not going to live for ever.