Quotes About BBC

Following 25 children for the TV series 'Child of Our Time' has been extraordinary. The BBC's original plan was to commemorate the new millennium. What better way than to film a number of expectant mums from across the U.K.? Coming from widely different backgrounds, all were due to give birth on January 1, 2000.

I'd like to thank the BBC for allowing me to work here. And I'd like to thank the wife and kids for making it necessary.

I did six series for the BBC and that was enough. I've been writing for ten years, which is more challenging artistically.

'Dancing with the Stars' is a great format for us. It's a format we license from the BBC, so that can't travel for us, but we consider it a great success. 'Desperate Housewives,' on the other hand, a huge success for us internationally. 'Missing' has actually sold to 80 territories before it's even gone on the air.

I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown.

Radio 2 feels like I'm still at the pub with all my friends but now my father-in-law has joined the table. But I love it. If I was a stick of rock I'd have BBC written through me.

I want the BBC to be a mass market public service broadcaster still funded by the licence fee... and the licence fee is more durable than many people in the commercial sector believe.

I've got no problem with getting history wrong for a purpose - Shakespeare often got things wrong for a reason. But it's the randomised arrogance of ignorance of 'The Tudors.' Shame on the BBC for producing it.

The BBC fulfils a wonderful cultural function. Maybe the problem is that it feels it needs to be everything to everybody.

Obviously, the BBC is funded by licence-payers. If you are paying for a TV licence, when you see what people are paid, then you know you're funding that.

My first paid role was my first job out of drama school, which was 'Just William.' It was a BBC TV show. I played Ethel.

We are rather in the position that used to exist at the BBC, where you feel that you can pick up the phone to people who are experts in their field and they will be very favourably disposed to you and share their knowledge.

I don't have any quarrel with the BBC.

I'm very good at compartmentalising my life. I did motor-racing for a while, stopped, didn't miss it. I did power-boat racing for a while, stopped, didn't miss it. I had such a good run at the BBC. I had a hell of a CV with arguably the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world. But I've never missed it since.

If you are a fan of my BBC series 'Great Continental Railway Journeys,' you'll probably not be surprised to learn that one of my great aspirations is to travel on Egypt's railways.

If we lose the BBC it would be a disaster for the entire country. I genuinely believe that.

I did three winters at BBC Radio Leicester while playing cricket in the summers.

It was a free-for-all; the BBC wouldn't play anything so we had pirate radio playing the African-American music and the Beatles and greats like Howlin' Wolf and Robert Johnson and Motown's Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and Otis Redding.

You can talk to someone relatively famous, and they say, 'What do you do? What do you do for a job?' and I say, 'I make documentaries for the BBC,' and you see their eyes just glaze over.

The podcast most likely to encourage you to fully appreciate your food is the episode of BBC World Service's 'The Food Chain' in which Antonio Carluccio talks to Emily Thomas about his life in five dishes.

Reporters for the B.B.C. have such an extraordinary effect on the people they meet - wherever they go the natives sing. It seems so strange, they never do it when I am travelling, The B.B.C. oughtn't to let them, it spoils the programme. Just when you are hoping for a description of some nice place, everybody suddenly bursts out singing. Even Displaced Persons do it. And singing sounds much the same everywhere, so I switch it off.

I love the BBC, it's a gorgeous organisation and it's just 'cos it's got vaguely socialist state-run tendencies that people like bloody old Rupert Murdoch coat it off in the Sun, and it's gotta stop!

In 2010, the BBC spent nearly £230,000 on tea, but only £2000 on biscuits.

I haven't heard any music on the BBC World Service in a long time. Maybe I'm listening at the wrong times. But not one single piece of music.