Quotes from Harry Enfield

You can be a bit more naughty with a live show.

I played Nelson Mandela in one thing for laughs - and I did it because this thing had come round from the BBC that we couldn't do it any more.

I tend to think that these white supremacists like Terreblanche, the boneheads of the BNP and Bernard Manning are all so revoltingly ugly and unpleasant that they make the best possible advertisement for mixed marriages. Would you prefer your daughter to look like Naomi Campbell or Bernard Manning?

Comedians are like pop bands. When you're young, you have ruddy principles and don't do old stuff because you don't want to take away the purity of youth. But then as you get older, you look at The Rolling Stones and see what fun they have.

In the early '80s when I came to London, I didn't like opera. I didn't know anything about it.

What better way to attract an audience than to get everyone to shout 'Outrage!' at the size of your advance?

Someone said that the good thing about my TV programme was that it had so many tics, which I think are the subtle little touches of originality that Paul brings to it.

Public schoolboys are brought up to assume they should lead society, and Trotskyists know they are right about absolutely everything.

I used to watch a lot of afternoon TV. I started imitating the movies then.

People are much more vicious about comedy than about anything else. If it's drama they go: 'Oh well, that didn't really work.' But comedy, they get angry. And people who never thought you were ever very funny go: 'Fantastic, we can really have a go now. Great!

There's no easy way to lose weight.

I don't mind what the critics say, but I don't generally read them. I'm more concerned with viewing figures.

If I go to Liverpool, everyone's really nice to me. But when we do 'Scousers' I portray Liverpudlians as a bunch of thieving, unemployed, violent wastrels, which is a really terrible thing to do.

I'm a legend. Me and Vauxhall Astras. We're legends.

Why would you be a sell-out for making money out of what you can do?