Bbc Quotes

The BBC, during its 24 hours on the air, plays a very wide range of stuff. And it's not commercial. ~ Robin Trower

This is the BBC in London. You will now hear a statement from the Prime Minister." "I am speaking to you from the Cabinet room, Ten Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now, that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany. ~ Jeffrey Archer

I once worked with Emma Thompson's mother, Phyllida Law. I worked with her on a BBC drama, and she was hilarious. I loved her so much, and she was great to work with. ~ Thomas Sangster

Magic is just a term people use for things they're too primitive to understand properly. ~ Justin Richards

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music. ~ Keith Richards

Offer me?" A shrill note of indignation entered her voice. "Young man, there are three things that make Britain great. The first is our inability at playing sports."
How does that make Britain great?"
"Despite the certainty of loss, we try anyway with the absolute conviction that this year will be the one, regardless of all evidence to the contrary!"
I raised my eyebrows, but that simply meant I could see my blood more clearly, so looked away and said nothing.
"The second," she went on, "is the BBC. It may be erratic, tabloid, under-funded and unreliable, but without the World Service, obscure Dickens adaptions, the Today Program and Doctor Who, I honestly believe that the cultural and communal capacity of this country would have declined to the level of the apeman, largely owing to the advent of the mobile phone!"
"Oh," I said, feeling that something was expected. "Oh" was enough.
"And lastly, we have the NHS!"
"This is an NHS service?" I asked incredulously.
"I didn't say that, I merely pointed out that the NHS makes Britain great. Now lie still. ~ Kate Griffin

It's sad that the BBC is toning down Dennis the Menace for a cartoon series. He is losing his weapons, catapult and peashooter, will no longer pick on Walter the Softy, and his ferocious grimace is to be replaced by a charming, boyish smile. ~ Simon Hoggart

We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went. ~ Terry Gilliam

The BBC said I could stay on air until I was named. Well, I was named within the week. So I made no broadcasts after I'd been arrested, and the BBC stopped paying me at precisely the time when I needed the money most. ~ Paul Gambaccini

When the BBC decided to bring Doctor Who back as a feature film a few years ago, one national newspaper ran a poll to ask its readers who should be the new Doctor, and I topped it. ~ Simon Callow

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. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

The BBC is very good at period drama - world-famous for getting the details right. ~ Lynne Reid Banks

There are traditionalists, and there are people in the middle, which is where I am. I still get my newspaper delivered. I love the ritual of it. But I also jump into the cab when I leave home and I look at some BBC on my iPad. ~ Glenda Bailey

I've been told by the BBC that if I make one more offensive remark, anywhere, at any time, I will be sacked. And even the angel Gabriel would struggle to survive with that hanging over his head. It's inevitable that one day, someone, somewhere will say that I've offended them, and that will be that. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

The BBC's television, radio and online services remain an important part of British culture and the fact the BBC continues to thrive amongst audiences at home and abroad is testament to a professional and dedicated management team who are committed to providing a quality public service. ~ Pauline Neville-Jones

I feel that the BBC World Service is not as versatile as it used to be - or perhaps I'm not listening at the right times. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

BBC TV gets hold of an idea and beats it to death until we're all heartily sick of it. They buy people without thinking what they're going to do with them. It's the wrong way around. What they should be doing is employing really good ideas people to come up with good ideas. ~ Terry Wogan

At the BBC we've had plenty of women in good management jobs. It comes and goes but there's been plenty. On air, I think there's quite a bit more we can do. ~ Evan Davis

It's funny, isn't it, what will make you break? Your lover moves to London and falls in love with a news reader for the BBC and you feel fine and then one day you raise your umbrella slightly to cross Fifty-seventh Street and stare into the Burberry shop and begin to sob. Or your baby dies at birth and five years later, in an antique store, a small battered silver rattle with teeth marks in one end engraved with the name Emily lies on a square of velvet, and the sobs escape from the genie's bottle somewhere deep in your gut where they've lain low until then. Or the garbage bag breaks. ~ Anna Quindlen

It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a broad spectrum of interest, and if there was a hole in that spectrum, then the BBC would fill it. ~ David Attenborough

For a startling period of my life, I reported the Troubles in Ireland for the BBC. I lived in Dublin and was called out to all sorts of incidents that, if taken together, add up to a war - bombings, assassinations, riots, shootings, robberies, jailbreaks, kidnappings, and sieges. ~ Frank Delaney

In the summer of 2004, Malem Jan was sitting with Sirajuddin Haqqani, the second son of Jalaluddin, in their Pakistani base in the North Waziristan town of Miram Shah when they heard their names on the BBC. The Americans were offering $250,000 and $200,000, respectively, as rewards for information leading to their capture. ~ Anand Gopal

In television the democratization of knowledge and its pedagogical commercial exuberance have become one. Consider from the end of the nineties such BBC history shows as Surviving the Iron Age or The Ship: Retracing Cook's Endeavor Voyage - each shown 2001.... All these shows recruit volunteers who are put into environments conspicuously uncomfortable.... An emphasis on participants' surprise at the difficulties of daily life and a previously unexamined and thus taken for granted assumption of physical comfort is the formula for melodrama in these kinds of shows.... All of them are one part soap opera, one part period recreation - and with folks from our time who invite audience identification as "us," viewers mentally enacting too, playing at, reenacting, shadowing, experimenting, speculating, trying to provide evidence for, various understandings of varying pasts.... "Science" and all it stands for - knowledges broadly understood or our everyday knowledge-managed technologies - are especially lively players in the action.... ~ Katie King

This book, then, does not consist of academic philosophical musings. Rather, it is a work of oral literature, addressed to people at war. How strange it must have seemed to turn on the radio, which was every day bringing news of death and unspeakable destruction, and hear one man talking, in an intelligent, good-humored, and probing tone, about decent and humane behavior, fair play, and the importance of knowing right from wrong. Asked by the BBC to explain to his fellow Britons what Christians believe, C. S. Lewis proceeded with the task as if it were the simplest thing in the world, and also the most important. ~ C.S. Lewis

When the news is good, the BBC view is: 'Get the government out of the picture quickly, don't allow them to say anything about it.' When the news is bad: 'Let's all dump on the government.' ~ Iain Duncan Smith

There are so few people left alive from back then, you may as well be talking to them about the Black Death. Nobody recalls the shite in the 30s and that were fucking horrible. For Christ's sake, nobody wants to remember the shite in the 80s. It's all forgotten and swept under the rug by the newspapers and the BBC. They get nostalgic about the music, but they never want to mention the misery. It's all shite. As for the bloody Second World War, the politicians only talk about it when they need an excuse to go pissing about in one of those fucking Muslim countries. ~ Harry Leslie Smith

People in the BBC are always dying to get out of their open-plan offices. ~ Andrew Davies

What comes with a job as a staff member of the BBC is a certain self-censoring that you get utterly used to. You don't say everything you think. You hold back on some things. ~ Evan Davis

All I can do is advocate changes at the BBC while respecting editorial independence upon which the success of the BBC rests. I can't do anything that requires the BBC to pay certain people certain amounts. ~ Jeremy Hunt

People should cool down a little bit and not look at the people in the other party as enemies. ~ Joe Lieberman

Inspector Rebus is a great character, so when the opportunity came up to revive the role for 'BBC Children in Need,' and really have a bit of fun with it, I was happy to take part. ~ Ken Stott

My dad is an art director for BBC TV shows, and my mum does screen printing workshops. Both of my parents played instruments, too, and my mum used to have crazy house parties when me and my brother were young - dub and garage would be banging through my house. ~ King Krule

The BBC should not have a cheerleader. It should have somebody who runs the organisation in the interests of the public and that should be a chairman. ~ Gavyn Davies

She had been dumped a couple of years before by a sort of male equivalent to Charlie, a guy called Michael who wanted to be something at the BBC. (He never made it, the wanker, and each day we never saw him on TV or heard him on the radio, something inside us rejoiced.) ~ Nick Hornby

I exist as an annexe of the BBC. I'm down the road a bit from the main building, in a little hut. ~ Alexei Sayle

WI played a young Helena Bonham Carter in a BBC film called 'A Dark Adapted Eye,' and I thought she was a completely spellbinding person. Totally unmoved by other people's expectations, fashions or opinions. She's probably the coolest English actress there is. Incredibly idiosyncratic. ~ Honeysuckle Weeks

The BBC has the obligation to think big. And at the moment, that clarion call sounds an uncertain note to me. ~ Jonathan Dimbleby

That's the first time I've seen sex between two men on the BBC. ~ Eamon Dunphy

this morning, listening to the BBC news, I learned that half of all prisoners in the UK have the reading age of an eleven-year-old, or below. This ~ Neil Gaiman

My fantasy is, if I wasn't on 'Dexter,' I would move my family to London and work for the BBC on 'Doctor Who.' ~ Manny Coto

CNN International, Al-Jazeera and BBC are the same in how they report mostly that America is wrong and bad. ~ Roger Ailes

Like every big organisation these days, the BBC is obsessed with the wellbeing of those who set foot on its premises. Studios must display warning notices if there is real glass on the set, and the other day I was presented with a booklet explaining how to use a door. I am not kidding. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

I just took [my cancer diagnosis] as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought "ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this?" and I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it. ~ Iain M. Banks

Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland. ~ Gyorgy Ligeti

The BBC is very much in thrall to all this techno cross-fertilisation, in much the same way that print journalists are now encouraged to blog. To the point where there is an emerging breed of sub-editors who take perfectly well-written and punctuated original copy and rewrite it so that it resembles a text message written by a 14-year-old under the influence of Bacardi Breezers. ~ Kathryn Flett

The BBC can be infuriating at times but I love it with a passion. ~ John Sweeney

She will listen to BBC radio and hear the accounts of the deaths and the riots - "religious with undertones of ethnic tension" the voice will say. And she will fling the radio to the wall and a fierce red rage will run through her at how it has all been packaged and sanitized and made to fit into so few words, all those bodies. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We're big fans of the show on BBC, and some of the greatest actors in film and television have done this character, from Basil Rathbone to Nicol Williamson to Michael Caine. (Executive producer) Rob Doherty came in with the pitch last season, it was immediately a show that we gravitated towards. ~ Nina Tassler

The prospect of the UK without a BBC funded by the licence fee is anywhere between improbable and impossible. ~ Tessa Jowell

Recently, while I was in England, I saw a documentary on the BBC about the border between India and Pakistan at Wagah. When the border closes each evening around six o' clock, the soldiers on each side do these amazing high-stepping peacock march-offs (like a dance-off). The displays are almost identical on each side and thousands gather to watch them. Though they're patrolling along their separate borders, what comes across is how similar they are. ~ Matthea Harvey

You know, the Elizabethans thought nostalgia was a diagnosable disease. Perhaps they were right. ~ Mark Gatiss

If, Sir, I possessed the power of conveying unlimited sexual attraction through the potency of my voice, I would not be reduced to accepting a miserable pittance from the BBC for interviewing a faded female in a damp basement. ~ Gilbert Harding

I hate when you play therapist. Especially with your accent. It makes everything you say sound so BBC. ~ Augusten Burroughs

BBC Radio is not so much an art or industry as it is a way of life ... a mirror that reflects ... the eccentricities, the looniness that make Britons slightly different from other humans. ~ Morley Safer

Early on, America took one path and went down the advertising road, and in the UK they founded the BBC and developed a different kind of public broadcasting. There was a point where TV was so beholden to commercial interest that people - civil society - actually rose up and said, "This is ridiculous: we have our soap-selling soap operas, cigarette-sponsored news broadcast; we have our rigged quiz shows - let's put some checks and balances here." ~ Astra Taylor

It's very different doing a food show in America and doing one in Britain. I did a 20-part series for the BBC series called 'Eating With the Enemy.' The budget for all 20 episodes was probably the budget for a single episode of 'Top Chef.' It's the difference between making a home movie in your backyard and going to Hollywood. ~ Toby Young

As long as the appointment process is transparent and there is a broad mix of political views among the governors of the BBC, I think the public can feel confident that impartiality and independence are just as important to me as they have been to previous incumbents. ~ Gavyn Davies

As soon as I got my proper first job, I never did acting again. I think the last thing I did was a Mike Figures film, and then I got a series with the BBC. I'm glad of the experience, because I think it's very, very good to understand what actors go through. ~ Justin Chadwick

Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. He told the BBC:The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. ~ Stephen Hawking

Greg Dyke is on record as saying that once the BBC was attacked, it was their job to defend themselves. But that is not their job. ~ Alastair Campbell

I have neither the learning nor the experience to know whether the doomsayers are right about the human causes of climate change. But I am willing to acknowledge that people who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that it is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC?s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago. ~ Jeremy Paxman

Any nerd who grew up around the time that I did, BBC programming was a treasure chest for us. ~ Chris Hardwick

I never met David Kelly, but I knew from what he told other people that this was not his view. The BBC were saying that Tony Blair was making up lies so that he could send young men and women to war, maybe to die. I think that if the BBC had done their jobs professionally, they'd have realised that you couldn't justify what they said. And nothing has emerged since to justify that report. ~ Alastair Campbell

I've told you, I don't know!' bellowed the Doctor, angrily. 'I can't have an answer for everything.'
Oh, that's a good one, thought Ace. ~ Mark Gatiss

I'd say, don't listen to what anyone says: you're good. Go put your anorak on. Get your thick bottle-top specs. Draw your little cartoons and your comics and keep writing to the BBC. ~ Peter Capaldi

[Taken from a BBC documentary]
Tariq was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, then part of British-ruled India, in 1943. A Catholic school education did nothing to shake his life-long atheism, which he shared with his communist parents. ~ Tariq Ali

I have been to Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street but cannot get on the BBC. I am very disappointed because it boils down to snobbery. ~ Phil Taylor

Richie told Ben how much he had admired the BBC communications center in London ... but there was a puzzled sort of light in his eyes, as if he could not quite reconcile that building with this man ... or with the fat earnest boy who had showed them how to flood out half the Barrens with scrounged boards and a rusty car door. ~ Stephen King

I went to L.A., and I was on two different studio movies at Fox and Sony, but they were never made in the end. When the second one wasn't happening, I ended up doing an episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' for the BBC, and went on a roots trip from England to Kenya, India, and pre-partition India in Pakistan, where my family originally came from. ~ Gurinder Chadha

I believe that the BBC, in spite of the stupidity of its foreign propaganda and the unbearable voices of its announcers, is very truthful. It is generally regarded here as more reliable than the press. ~ George Orwell

I've played the leads in two British TV series. I've done a bunch of mini-series. Everybody in Australia is a bit in awe of BBC. I've worked for there, and that was a great experience. ~ Robert Taylor

All terrorism is fake. It is a military deception practiced by the rich upon the poor in an ongoing class war. Their most important weapon in this class war are television presenters. The BBC has actually become The Ministry of Truth of George Orwell's 1984….Why is this happening right now? It's happening because we no longer have an enemy. We have an unprecedented situation in which there is only one super state: the Anglo-American alliance…..The ruling group maintain their position in society by controlling the masses through fear. In order to make us believe that we must live in fear, the rich had to provide us with a new foreign enemy, a "bogeyman" who wants to conquer the world. The moment you have a world at peace, the keystone in the arch of ruling class power is gone. Every year America's oligarchs take three trillion dollars out of America's economy. This is how the rich have rigged the system – so that it benefits them at the expense of everyone else all of the time. To keep this fraud going, the public must be convinced of the need for military expenditure, and this is where all of the phony terror attacks come in. Here is Orwell's definition of totalitarianism: ' A society living by and for continuous warfare in which the ruling caste have ceased to have any real function but succeed in clinging to power through force and fraud. ~ Francis Richard Conolly

I have been listening to sport and watching sport on the BBC since I was a tiny boy. ~ Allan McNish

That is you to me
That is where I know you are
Never on the land
But gone to find the North Star

from "The North Star Grassman and the Ravens" (BBC in Concert) ~ Sandy Denny

I don't really get a chance to watch much television. I mostly watch BBC Worldwide and repeats of Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. ~ Will Estes

The BBC must never be all about ratings - or even mainly about ratings. In the past year, we have made a raft of terrific programmes which stand comparison with the best the BBC has ever done: 'Blue Planet,' 'Walking with Beasts,' 'Son of God,' 'Clocking Off,' 'The Way We Live Now,' 'Conspiracy,' 'Lost World.' ~ Gavyn Davies

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

Have you ever had someone? And when I say "had", I'm being indelicate. ~ Irene Adler

The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe. ~ Terry Pratchett

I sat on the floor and watched TV
Thanking Christ for the BBC
A stupid fucking place to be
Down Rain Street ~ Shane MacGowan

BBC Radio is a never-never land of broadcasting, a safe haven from commercial considerations, a honey pot for every scholar and every hare-brained nut to stick a finger into. ~ Morley Safer

Never knowingly be serious. Rule 27. ~ Steven Moffat

As the BBC approaches the final phase of decisions about its future, it will be important for those involved to be established in post and ready to take responsibility for implementation of the outcome. ~ Pauline Neville-Jones

The fact that the Princess of Wales, a major international figure, and the BBC, a leading public broadcasting company, had to go to such extraordinary lengths to record an interview makes a mockery of the notion that we live in an open society. Indeed, if the programme had been the smuggled testimony of a Middle Eastern princess there would have been outraged protests about a repressive regime. ~ Andrew Morton

I'm freestylin just on the microphone
On the BBC, on the BBC
I'm just freestylin on the BBC
Um British Broadcasting Company
i'm just basically making this shit up as I go along
Basically just free
Just basically from the top of my dome
Sometimes it's not so good
My rhymes are so potent that in this small segment
I made all the lady listeners pregnant ~ Flight Of The Conchords

Indeed, it occasionally seems as if the book has attempted to inoculate itself against the prospect of actually being read. ~ Roger Moorhouse

The most annoying person on the BBC is Russell Brand, I've actually been close up to that boy. He smells like when you mix garlic with coffee and alcohol. I'm just saying when you get close to him, he could do with a bit of Sure For Men, he stinks. ~ Noel Gallagher

I honestly don't think you're taken seriously until you're 30. Any ideas I've ever taken to the BBC, they've told me I wasn't ready for it. ~ Rhys Thomas

The BBC is another part of the destruction of Great Britain. ~ Norman Tebbit

Oh, I may be on the side of the angels, but don't for one second think that I am one of them ~ Sherlock BBC

On April 1st, 1957, a BBC news program ended with a three minute segment about a Spaghetti farm in Switzerland. In the segment, spaghetti (not being a popular dish in England at the time) was said to grow on trees. Many people believed the report and called the BBC to ask how to grow their own spaghetti tree. The response: Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best. ~ BBC

I used to do all my programming on a BBC computer. It was limited to 16 tracks, and you used the keyboard, not a mouse, to input, but I was using it so long, I got quite fast at it. ~ Vince Clarke

I am sorry to be leaving the BBC. I have enjoyed a fascinating seven years at the corporation and am particularly proud to have played a small part in the development of the BBC's Global News services, BBC World Service and BBC World. ~ Pauline Neville-Jones

I never thought I was very good at developing material. I grew up at the BBC where they sent you scripts. ~ Stephen Frears

I'm quite grateful to the BBC. They helped me back onto the touring circuit. ~ Louise Jameson

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. ~ Gavyn Davies

You've got a choice. Peace or war? Life or death? Harmony or hate? I've never understood why that even needs discussion, it's so flippin' obvious! ~ Juno Dawson

My wife and I have just returned from Belgium where, courtesy of the hotel TV, we acquired a new perspective on the Iraq war. The difference between BBC, ITV and CNN on the one hand and the channels from Belgium, Germany and France on the other was stark and disturbing. The 'coalition' output, which strongly influences public opinion in Britain, comprises reports from 'embedded' reporters telling us about the mud and dust, press conferences by generals describing the tip of the iceberg they wanted us to see and studio debates among armchair pundits. ~ David Walker

Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity. ~ Stephen Fry

Universities are the most anti-Israel mainstream institutions in America. And Westerns journalists nearly always use militant or gunman to describe Islamist terrorists. For Reuters, BBC, the Associated Press, CNN, and nearly all newspapers, it violates moral neutrality to label even a man attempting to smash a bomb-laden car into a nightclub a terrorist. ~ Dennis Prager