Quotes from Gyles Brandreth

The Brandreth Rule is: when in Rome, do as the Romans do—speak English.

The newspapers of today chronicle with degrading avidity the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details of the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatever. I must give them up.

You'll recall," said Sickert, brushing dust from his trousers with the back of his hand, "that a year or two ago I was chased through the back streets of King's Cross by a posse of prostitutes all crying 'Jack the Ripper!' after me.

As you will be aware, gentlemen, I have made it my life's work to entertain the working classes, enrage the middle classes, and fascinate the aristocracy—but I do believe I've just met my match. Accrington 'Arry here is in a class of his own, beyond my reach.

Life's aim, if it has one, is to be always looking for temptations - and there are not nearly enough of them, I find. I sometimes pass the whole day without coming across a single one. It makes one so nervous about the future.

I aim to anatomise some of the linguistic horrors of our time, work out where we've been going wrong (and why), and come up with some tips and tricks to help show how, in future, we can make fewer (rather than 'less') mistakes. All right? Is 'alright' all right? You'll find out right here.

Another survey revealed that while nine out of ten primary school children could identify a Dalek, only a third could recognise and name a magpie.

The peach-out-of-reach in the adjacent orchard is always more alluring than the apple on the ground in one's own.

At a bus station: TOILETS ONLY FOR DISABLED PREGNANT CHILDREN

If an abbreviation with a full stop comes at the end of a sentence, you don't need to add another full stop: He really loves his asides, anecdotes, incidental stories, etc. Bless.

Creativity, we're told, is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.

The way you use the commas should give your sentence its correct meaning — viz: The men, who were handsome, found partners. There, the relative clause tells us that all the men were handsome and all found partners. The men who were handsome found partners. With this restrictive relative clause, without commas, we are discovering something quite different: here, only the men who were handsome found partners.

When you recover your old sofa from the skip and get it re-covered, it may take you a while to recover from the cost. (A hyphen can change the very meaning of a word.)

STUDENTS GET FIRST HAND JOB EXPERIENCE' is a newspaper headline that I have seen with my own eyes. I think you'll agree: it needed a hyphen, either between 'first' and 'hand' or between 'hand' and 'job', depending.

Some people believe that it was while studying the niceties of British and American spelling that the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch painted his masterpiece, 'The Scream'.

While an Edwardian dandy might have wooed his dimpled darling with lovey-dovey terms of endearment, a modern Romeo might use a more contemporary line in flattery: 'Bae, you is one cool, sick, mean bitch.

Every Holmes must have his Watson

both were writers of high ambition, with

I mean it,' said Bosie seriously. 'I'd like to murder him, in cold blood.' 'Well, you can't, Bosie,' said Oscar, 'leastways, not tonight.' 'Why not?' demanded Bosie petulantly. 'It's Sunday, Bosie,' said Oscar, 'and a gentleman never murders his father on a Sunday. You should know that. Did they teach you nothing at Winchester?

When men give up saying what is charming," Oscar answered, "they give up thinking what is charming. I hope I'll never do that.

The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.

He looked closely into Vyvyan's round and smiling face and said solemnly, "Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.

And, right or wrong, rational or absurd, Oscar Wilde is always fascinating. He is the man you hope will walk into the room and come to sit at the spare place at your table.

He was a celebrity, in the tradition of Lord Byron and Beau Brummell, but more Brummell than Byron, more style than substance. "Evidently I am 'somebody,'" he noted at the time, "but what have I done? I've been 'noticed.' That is something, I suppose. And I have published one book of poems. That doesn't amount to much.