Top 104 Quotes & Sayings by David Jason

The first series of 'Open All Hours' came and went without much fanfare because the BBC, in its almighty wisdom, put it out on BBC2, reasoning that it was 'a gentle comedy', better suited to the calms of the second channel than to the noisier, choppier waters of the first.

In 1977, while I was performing in a play in Cardiff, a friend introduced me to a striking redhead called Myfanwy Talog, famed for her appearances on Welsh television with the comedy duo Rees and Ronnie. We were instantly smitten and eventually moved in together, sharing 18 happy years.

I've met a lot of military men in my time. After they retire, they are still extremely game. They dress perfectly and have impeccable manners. They always end up as secretaries of golf clubs. I have great admiration for them.

John Sullivan's scripts were always very funny, and cast and crew got on well.

A lot of TV has moved away from family viewing. But with 'The Royal Bodyguard,' we have tried to make a show when no one will be worried about sitting there with their kids or their grandma.

While scuba diving off the British Virgin Islands about 25 years ago, our boat's anchor got stuck. I dived down to release it, but I got separated from the boat and was stranded as it sped away. I had to swim for an hour to the nearest island with all my scuba kit on before I was rescued.

When I made my first decision, come hell or high water, that I would try to be a professional actor, I was burnt. Emotionally, I was burnt.

I started at the Incognito Theatre as an amateur.

It seems to me that as soon as politicians get in, they become part of this club, and the rest of us, beneath them, are just ants running about. They become besotted with their position.

I'm an actor, and so of course I want to see TV companies making good dramas. I want that to be a priority.

I'm a qualified Professional Association of Diving Instructors Divemaster.

I was not driven by fame and fortune.

We get the impression through film and TV that Americans are violent gangsters with guns or upper-middle-class people in romcoms. I really liked the people. They were really warm. They could have been Brits. I mean that in the nicest possible way.

My life has been in reverse. It wasn't fame, and it wasn't money, but I always wanted to succeed. The only way I could do that was to try with every job to be better than I was in the last one, and to learn.

If I want to go out to a restaurant with some friends, I'm more than happy that we go in under the radar, have a little evening on our own.

I have no interest in Twitter or Twotter or Twatter. It would never occur to me to use it. People who Tweet during programmes are always asking, 'What happened then?' If you're bloody Twittering away all the time, you miss what is actually going on.

It's very nice to meet people who just get on, work hard, and don't have things handed to them.

When you had just three and then four channels, I could always find something that was watchable because the standard of TV was much higher. In those days, they had so much more money to put into so many less programmes.

I was never good academically. It was mainly my own fault.

I would like 'Frost' to go on forever, but you don't want people in the press hammering you, saying you've outstayed your welcome or that it's not believable anymore.

I shall act until I drop. I just want to keep doing it and making it fun.

I joined an amateur drama group as a teenager, fell in love with theatre, and it totally changed my life.

I grew up in London, a city devastated by the bombing. I am, you might say, a Blitz Baby.

My parents, Arthur and Olwen, were honest, working-class people who raised my brother Arthur, sister June, and me with the values of that era - patriotism, stoicism, honesty, concern for your neighbours, and judging a man by what he did rather than what he had.

The Christmas of 1965 was a Yuletide with a difference at my parents' tiny terrace house in North London: it was the first time my family had been able to see me on television.

After leaving school, I worked as an electrician before becoming an actor.

Working on 'Open All Hours' had some unexpected perks, not least the attractions of the canteen at the BBC's rehearsal studios in West London.

My father used to say, 'What the hell are you listening to? Put that bloody rubbish off.' And it was The Beatles.

While I'm hale and hearty, I've no thought in my mind to retire.

For me, the making of a documentary to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain was an intensely personal journey. I was born in February 1940, so I was just six months old as the battle raged overhead.

How do I feel about being called a national treasure? I think it's marvellous if that's people's opinion. But I'd rather have the money than the label.

Being an actor is like being a monk: you have got to be dedicated.

I deliberately decided not to go on Twitter. I've read about how much stress it can cause. I don't think it's healthy.

Journalists are out to trap me with my underwear showing.

That's humour - doing what funny people have done since comedy began without being edgy and pushing boundaries.

I've been lucky enough to do this fantastic job now for more than 50 years. To make people laugh, to entertain, create a wide range of emotions - it has always been a tremendous thrill for me, and it still is.

I can be intolerant.

I was 25 when I'd told my parents that I was giving up steady work as an electrician to become an actor. They couldn't have been less enthusiastic if I'd proposed starting a commercial newt-breeding operation in the bathroom.

You can't make people enjoy what you're doing unless you're enjoying it yourself.

One of the things I learned was that I really enjoyed stunt-car driving.

In this business, you have to have what they call an idiotic determination to succeed.

A couple of years ago, I bought my own helicopter, a Robinson R44. I use it occasionally to fly myself to sets where I am filming or to business meetings.

People ask me if I am thinking of retiring. Well, it doesn't occur to me. Different day, different challenge, different way. Lovely jubbly.

My father, Arthur, was a fishmonger, first at Billingsgate market and later in Camden Town and Golders Green.

My mum, Olwen, was a bright and talkative woman who loved a gossip and a story and was given slightly to malapropisms. And she was Welsh, so, of course, she sang.

I have a yellow labrador, Tuffy, and a little rescue dog, Bella, who is the boss.

I needed to be an actor more than anything.

A show like the 'Only Fool and Horses' Christmas special got 24 million viewers, so practically everyone in the country was watching. But of course it's a different world now, with so many channels. And those kind of figures are really difficult to achieve.

On 'EastEnders' everyone's bitter, angry. Where are the wonderful characters that I lived with, who could find humour even in the lowest form of living?

There are certain values that, in my opinion, television has lost - various moral lines. How far you go in, say, revealing what people get up to on reality TV, and also graphic violence and swearing - the taboo of various swear-words is no longer there. It's worrying.

We were taught fortitude by our parents, who had gone through the war. Being a child then was fun. We could go out and play in the street - there were few cars - and we felt very safe.

Driving a Model T Ford was extremely difficult. The pedals are reversed from the way they are now. It's so crude, but that was the motorcar that started it all. It's an incredible part of history.

I was a very shy sort of person, and by acting different characters, I could immerse myself and make them do what, perhaps, I wouldn't do.

Comedy is a funny business, which you have to take seriously.

When I was a lad, my parents and all their equivalents never lusted after other people's riches or success.

The ups and downs are part of what has made you.

Missing out on 'Monty Python' was a real blow at the time. I sometimes wonder how things would have been different if I had been invited to join 'Monty Python,' but as the saying goes, one door closes, another opens.

When you're young, for God's sake, get out and try everything in terms of a career. Or go abroad, meet people.

I'm a twin, but only I emerged live from the womb. The fact that I was originally one half of a duo gave rise to a theory, much propounded in newspaper profiles, that my life has been one desperate effort to compensate for that stillborn brother.

I was very shy and had low self-esteem; the only way to stop yourself getting beaten up was to turn your hand to being an idiot. At the beginning, it was survival, and after that, it became second nature.