Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Gyles Brandreth

To me Prince Philip was a hero and a role model - and a friend.

The fact that the Meghan and Harry interview was aired while Philip was in hospital did not trouble him. What did worry him was the couple's preoccupation with their own problems and their willingness to talk about them in public.

People confuse being full of words with being terribly intelligent and informed.

I know I'm hated. Or rather, that people struggle with dislike for me.

Among the upper classes, especially three or four generations ago, men and women had separate bedrooms. That's just the way it was.

I don't want to jeopardize my relationship with royalty by saying too much.

I mean, I am relatively pleased with myself and the world. But I don't assume that I'm liked.

What happened between the sheets on the night of the royal wedding I cannot tell you. I was not there.

My introduction to the Queen was disconcerting, to say the least. 'This is Gyles Brandreth,' said the Duke of Edinburgh cheerily. 'Apparently, he's writing about you.'

'An Audience With Kenneth Williams.' My wife and I went with him to the recording. He was paid £10,000, the largest fee he had ever received and was so nervous he was shaking. But his performance was matchless. He knew it was the best thing he'd ever done.

Prince Philip had formally 'retired' in the summer of 2017, a couple of months after his 96th birthday, because the Queen encouraged him to do so. She wanted to stop him 'pushing himself all the time'. She had become anxious about him.

In fact, when I shake hands with all those wonderful people at the Stratford Literary Festival, they will be shaking hands with the hand that shook the hand of Oscar Wilde.

I have been an MP and government minister.

I'm happy inside my own skin.

I'd known the Duke of Edinburgh over a period of 40 years, so I'd long been accustomed to his sense of humor.

Several people have told me that Queen Elizabeth made slighting comments about Philip within their hearing, and referred to him - not entirely humorously - as 'the Hun.'

I have been a print journalist.

I regularly dream about the Queen. Apparently, millions of people do. I wonder who she dreams about?

I'm a friend of Walter Cronkite.

Being made redundant is a personal tragedy.

They're supposed to cure everything. Want a baby? Have a Brandreth pill. Don't want a baby? Have a Brandreth pill.

I told Prince Philip that, having met them both, I was struck, not by the differences between him and Charles, but by their similarities.

Prince Philip's principal role since 1952 has been to support the Queen. Alongside that, he has created his own working life as founder, fellow, patron, president, chairman, or member of at least 837 organizations - as well as a Colonel or Colonel-in-Chief, Field Marshal, Admiral, Air Commodore 42 times over.

When I was an MP, John Prescott barracked me in the House of Commons, shouting: 'Woolly jumper! Woolly jumper!'

When I was 11, at prep school, I was starring in the school play, editing the school magazine and standing as Conservative candidate for the 1959 mock election.

And the purpose of small talk is not to be controversial, clever or even interesting. It's simply to fill the silent void with a small gesture of common humanity. It's a spoken smile, a verbal handshake.

Business is not my forte.

Was Prince Philip in love when he proposed to Elizabeth? At the time, he was a relatively penniless prince, with a rackety family and no home to call his own.

Bob Hope said: 'You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.' And while this quote is generally amusing, it is even more amusing when you know he said that when he was old.

We're only here once and there are lots of things I want to do.

In many ways, Prince Philip was remarkably good-humored and long-suffering.

I thought I would be Prime Minister.

I did once talk non-stop for 12 and a half hours, but it was to raise money for a worthwhile charity. At least, that's my excuse.

It is exhausting to be giving one's all in the theatre, my first duty is to my paying public, of course!

Life has not turned out as I hoped it would.

I said to my wife, Michele, 'What would you like for Christmas? Anything you want, darling, anything in our means.' She said she would like me to be the weight I was when we married. So I will not gorge myself.

I was lucky enough to know Prince Philip in his prime - the most dynamic man I have ever met. And I was privileged to know him almost to the end.

Contrary to the popular caricature of him, the Duke of Edinburgh was neither judgmental nor unfeeling.

The private Prince Philip - the inner man - was infinitely more difficult to reach. He was more sensitive, more thoughtful and more tolerant than you'd expect, but he kept these qualities hidden.

I think the Duke of Edinburgh would have been pleasantly surprised by the reaction to his death.

The buffoon is a product of the woolly jumpers in the 1980s on 'TV:am.' It was a costume and I loved earning money before breakfast, but 9 A. M. came and I then took off the woolly jumpers.

Indeed, the Duke of Edinburgh's disdain for his eldest son was all the more shocking because he made little or no attempt to hide it.

Prince Philip is very contrary. He challenges everything.

The Queen is frequently on her own, walking the dogs, riding her horses, playing patience, completing a jigsaw, sorting her photograph albums, watching television, phoning friends, doing the Telegraph crossword. Is she neglected? Is she suffering? Or does she simply understand her man?

A humorous quotation is a little window on the world that gives life a comic twist.

For centuries in Britain, the small-talk standby has been the weather.

People find communication in families difficult - games can help with that.

I own a lot of novelty knitwear and I think some of it's quite fun.

Long after Mae West is forgotten, her words will live on.

I've always adored Shakespeare.

People are always asking me on to quizzes - they think I know all the answers because I burble on so, but I don't do terribly well.

First and foremost, I am a writer. That's what I have spent my life doing.

I heard one woman say to another in the queue at a book signing: 'I shouldn't be buying this. He's a former Tory MP, you know.'

I met Ian McKellen queueing for returns and he said, 'Are you wearing your tights under your trousers?' and I said, 'How on earth did you guess that?' and he said, 'Because I'm wearing mine.'

I suppose I am instinctively flirtatious. But not exclusively to women. I want to be liked.

Playing games can contribute to making you happy, perhaps even without therapy.

I'm grateful for laughter of any kind, but it can be off-putting if one person is laughing at a different time or in a different way from the rest of the audience.

For more than 40 years now, relentlessly, I have been pursuing brief encounters with the great and the good.

I know that the Duke of Edinburgh's rule was, 'Don't talk about yourself, don't give personal interviews.' I know that, and I know he told his children that because he told me.

Prince Philip was a funny man who liked to laugh and make others laugh.