Quotes from Denis Norden

Everyone who appears in a scene gets paid.

There's an unseen force which lets birds know when you've just washed your car.

You know you're getting old when a four-letter word for something pleasurable to do in bed is r-e-a-d.

I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.

It's a funny kind of month, October. For the really keen cricket fan it's when you discover that your wife left you in May.

There's an unseen force which lets birds know when you've just washed your car.

If it ain't baroque, don't fax it.

My father made bridal dresses, which he sold wholesale, and always wanted me to join him. He looked upon what I did as precarious and frivolous - except that he loved it when my name was in the papers.

I defy anyone to get a decision that quickly these days.

We saw more of each other than we did of our wives. We wrote everything together. But how long can you go on doing that? How long can you go on being half an entity?

I recognise the pure gold that runs in Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin's work for 'Outnumbered' on TV. And on radio, I really enjoy John Finnemore.

You can't have your kayak and heat it.

It's like your children talking about holidays, you find they have a quite different memory of it from you. Perhaps everything is not how it is, but how it's remembered.

The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up.

You know you're getting old when a four-letter word for something pleasurable two people can do in bed together is R-E-A-D.

I have better peripheral vision in my left. It is quite hard to remain optimistic, but I have found the Macular Society, of whom I've been an enthusiastic supporter for nine years, tremendously helpful in providing support.

I've written not milestones of cinema but millstones.

I prefer radio to television. Radio is a dialogue; television is a monologue. In radio, you have to interact - they put the words in your head; you build the pictures in your mind. To that extent, it is more engaging than television.

Bob Monkhouse, Galton and Simpson, Spike Milligan and I all started around the same time with an enormous advantage: working to an audience all of whom had shared an awful, common experience - the war.

If all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players, where do all the audiences come from?

And if you can offer an explanation as to why it doesn't work then you've got to the whole root of comedy.

Middle age is when, whenever you go on holiday, you pack a sweater.

Almost all comedy is of its time. You can't expect audiences now to laugh at what amused people 60 years ago.

If the laughter of the audience was malicious we wouldn't show it.