Top 100 Quotes About The Bbc
#1. I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown.
Sarah Hall
#2. I sat on the floor and watched TV
Thanking Christ for the BBC
A stupid fucking place to be
Down Rain Street
Shane MacGowan
#3. Your brother needs to stop watching the BBC network." Logan shouted from inside, "I heard that, and never, woman. BBC holds my heart like no vixen ever shall.
Tijan
#4. Colin Morgan gives a stunning performance in Parked; he plays Merlin in the BBC TV show and he says the two characters are like night and day. Watch him. He's got everything it takes to be top notch.
Colm Meaney
#5. Getting to do what I think was my fifth BBC drama with Nikki Amuka-Bird - we've done 'Shoot The Messenger,' 'Five Days,' 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,' 'Born Equal' and now 'Small Island' - was another highlight for me. And filming in Jamaica was great, too.
David Oyelowo
#6. 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
#7. My YouTube videos have literally millions of views ... Yet I'm still airbrushed out of the BBC Stalinist revision of history; the chart shows have been instructed not to play my music!
Jonathan King
#9. 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
#10. My first job was a film called 'Storm Damage' for the BBC. I was 16 and working with really respected British actors. I didn't have an agent at the time, and it kind of threw me into real acting.
Ashley Madekwe
#11. When you're a kid, they tell you it's all ... grow up. Get a job. Get married. Get a house. Have a kid, and that's it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better.
Elton Pope
#12. I've gotten more flack from the remake nature of our 'Being Human' from American audiences than I have from British fans. Every fan of the BBC original that I've bumped into seemed very excited and interested in seeing what we did with it - at least to my face!
Samuel Witwer
#13. 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
#14. I do have a regard for the musicality of language that came from BBC sitcoms like 'Fawlty Towers.'
Russell Brand
#15. I wish I hadn't lost it, and for the rest of my life I can never again lose my temper on TV. The BBC could have sacked me and that would have been the end of my career on TV.
John Sweeney
#16. [The] BBC was known as Auntie suggesting someone prudish and Victorian and that she still is on some days. On others she's a champagne-soaked floozie, her skirts in disarray, her mind in the gutter, and the mixture can be quite wonderful.
Morley Safer
#17. I'm working harder now than ever before. I couldn't turn down the BBC job because I've never been offered the opportunity of killing three or four people on screen before!
Adam Faith
#18. The BBC is very good at period drama - world-famous for getting the details right.
Lynne Reid Banks
#19. He is more rooted to the idea of home. He created this home...and established routines like watching the BBC and cooking barbecues for friends. It's much harder to dismantle that world and to rebuild it somewhere else.
Azar Nafisi
#20. The BBC is another part of the destruction of Great Britain.
Norman Tebbit
#21. 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
#22. When I joined Granada - which, you don't want to start crying about these things, but Granada was a very, very hot place to be, it was my good fortune to be there at that time - the BBC was firmly asleep.
Michael Apted
#23. 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
#24. Any nerd who grew up around the time that I did, BBC programming was a treasure chest for us.
Chris Hardwick
#25. 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
#27. Without the BBC, the proliferation of television and radio channels by the private sector would simply result in more and more channels, with tiny audiences, all seeking to do the same thing. The future would be one of fragmentation - fragmentation without either plurality or diversity.
Gavyn Davies
#28. There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education, started to learn, then went on the pill, the whole thing, and so there are today a lot more women writers, editors, producers, and so a lot more women's stories. God, the BBC's practically run by women.
Julie Walters
#29. 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
#30. Ifemelu and Jane laughed when they discovered how similar their childhoods in Grenada and Nigeria had been, with Enid Blyton books and Anglophile teachers and fathers who worshipped the BBC World Service.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#31. I wanted to say, "I'm the Doctor and this is my companion," but I doubted Sophie was a fan of the long-running BBC series. Forget the TARDIS and the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor's best gadget was the psychic paper. I can't tell you how many times I wished I had some.
Kevin Hearne
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. Our blessed radio. It gives us eyes and ears out into the world. We listen to the German station only for good music. And we listen to the BBC for hope.
Anne Frank
#37. 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
#38. It was just at the end of the golden era of BBC comedy, which was fantastic.
John Leeson
#39. 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
#40. The BBC is locked to the reading of the economy that is run out of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls' office. They think if only you spend and borrow more money you can create growth everywhere.
Iain Duncan Smith
#41. You know how it is
you get older, you get wiser, you start to ask yourself 'is it any use being able to summon creatures of the nether deeps when I could be watching BBC 4?
Kate Griffin
#42. 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
#43. If you're looking to find a career that makes a difference - and work you really love - this book will show you how.
Paul Allen
#44. The first thing we did was to proclaim our Liverpoolness to the world, and say 'It's all right to come from Liverpool and talk like this'. Before, anybody from Liverpool who made it, like Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Arthur Askey, had to lose their accent to get on the BBC.
John Lennon
#45. The BBC were not playing the music that was happening on the street so we did an independent production because we knew we had an audience. Then we licensed the album to EMI.
Georgie Fame
#46. I'm quite grateful to the BBC. They helped me back onto the touring circuit.
Louise Jameson
#47. The BBC is the greatest broadcaster in the world. It's the standard that everyone measures themselves against. If we lose the BBC, it won't be quite as bad as losing the royal family, but an integral part of this country will have gone. But then, I'm an old guy.
Terry Wogan
#48. It was sad leaving the BBC; not quite like being divorced, but you don't leave after a period stretching from 1960 to 1999 without feeling a certain number of pangs.
Richie Benaud
#49. 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
#50. I'd like to do a kind of 'Sunday Night At The Palladium'-style variety show on the BBC.
Anton Du Beke
#51. 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
#52. Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.
Gyorgy Ligeti
#53. For better or worse, MTV sort of bridges the whole country together almost like the BBC does in England. It's opened up everything so wide that it's possible for everyone to have different ideas.
Joey Ramone
#54. Edward Smith: What do you think is the characteristic of a really nice person? Some people you obviously do like more than others.
Andy Warhol: Ummm, well, if they talk a lot.
ES: What, and don't make you talk?
AW: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person.
Andy Warhol
#55. There is an honourable tradition in British public life that those charged with authority at the top of an organisation should accept responsibility for what happens in that organisation. I am therefore writing to the prime minister today to tender my resignation as chairman of the BBC.
Gavyn Davies
#56. The trouble with climate change is it's an extraordinarily diverse and complex issue, but for example if the BBC would let me make some of the programmes I'd like to make on climate change, I bet you there would be a change of emphasis.
Robert Winston
#57. The BBC, during its 24 hours on the air, plays a very wide range of stuff. And it's not commercial.
Robin Trower
#58. 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
#59. I always got very excited about the Masters as a kid. I could hardly wait until the Wednesday when you'd get the BBC's preview. And I'd then be glued to the screen until Sunday night.
Rory McIlroy
#60. The BBC came to me and they wanted to adapt the book [Three Musketeers] again, in the straightforward way, and I said no to that. I didn't want to do that. But what I did want to do was have a real look at the adventure genre because I thought it was ripe for reinvention.
Adrian Hodges
#61. 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
#62. A lot of the music is the kind of thing I grew up with, listening to it with my parents. So there was a band in London called the BBC Big Band, and I sang with them. And I had never done a big band before, and it was just so fantastic and I had such a good time ... so that's how it all came about
Frances Ruffelle
#63. 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
#64. When I was under house arrest, it was the BBC that spoke to me - I listened.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#65. An adaptation I was working on of Trollope's 'The Pallisers' has been axed by the BBC ... I was also going to do Dickens' 'Dombey and Son' but they've asked me to do 'David Copperfield' instead.
Andrew Davies
#66. Yesterday people were going past my window in t shirts and dresses. But that's the men at the BBC for you.
Eddie Mair
#67. So now it's space and time," he said. "You ever watch Doctor Who on PBS?"
"All the time," she said dryly, "on the BBC. And don't think I wouldn't sell my soul for a TARDIS.
Diana Gabaldon
#68. One of the things the BBC does better than anyone is period drama.
David Oyelowo
#69. Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.
Michael Caine
#70. It's an absolute disgrace that there isn't a books programme on the BBC.
Mariella Frostrup
#71. 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
#72. I have not watched WAGs World, I have not watched the BBC's Upstairs, Downstairs, either. It would be Downton Abbey, I think.
Theresa May
#73. You go in and meet the head of BBC One and get an assurance about not dumbing down. And then, of course a few months later, he's been replaced by someone you haven't met.
John Cleese
#74. Before 'American Idol' and all this stuff, I was obsessed with music charts, and I used to go online to find out what was popular in other countries. I'd log on to the BBC website, and that's how I found out about artists like Natasha Bedingfield, Daniel Bedingfield and Take That.
David Archuleta
#75. I was obsessed with George Orwell for years. I remember going to the town library and having to put in interlibrary loan requests to get the compilation of his BBC radio pieces. I had to get everything he ever wrote.
Jill Lepore
#76. I've been lucky to have made a number of travel programmes with the BBC, the object being to see places off the beaten track. As a result, I've often had a guide who's been able to show me things that you wouldn't see with a tour group.
Michael Palin
#77. [on BBC's Sherlock] It's a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It's a form of mental and physical gymnastics.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#78. Hair is also a problem. I remember once, when I was reporting from Beirut at the height of the civil war, someone wrote in to the BBC complaining about my appearance.
Kate Adie
#79. It would be extraordinary if the BBC were to make me the first black 'Doctor Who;' it would be extraordinary.
David Harewood
#80. If someone says, 'No, no, no, the earth is round!', they think this person is an extremist. That's what it's like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.
Jeff Randall
#81. As an arts journalist in London, working mainly for the BBC, I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of authors. From them I gleaned a great deal of passing instruction in writing and I observed one fascinating detail: no two writers approach their work - physically - in the same way.
Frank Delaney
#82. My parents were Northern Ireland Labour party people. We read the 'Guardian' and the 'New Statesman,' listened to the BBC. The house was full of books. We didn't get a television until 'That Was The Week That Was' started. There was nothing to do but read.
Tom Paulin
#83. CNN International, Al-Jazeera and BBC are the same in how they report mostly that America is wrong and bad.
Roger Ailes
#84. I've always had an unsentimental view. I don't think the BBC is my auntie. I worked there for years, and you learn that they don't love you for yourself. They'll use you as long as you're popular. You shouldn't wait until it starts to wane. It can sometimes end badly.
Terry Wogan
#85. I've also just finished filming the role of Robert Brown in 'Just William,' which is due to transmit on BBC One at Christmas.
Harry Melling
#86. The decision to write full time was made when I was twenty-eight years old and had just had two small plays accepted for BBC Radio.
Douglas Kennedy
#87. I think that the BBC's attitude toward the show while it was in production was very similar to that which Macbeth had toward murdering people - initial doubts, followed by cautious enthusiasm and then greater and greater alarm at the sheer scale of the undertaking and still no end in sight.
Douglas Adams
#88. They are scared that the BBC or CNN may call them radicals, so they remain soft instead. The problem lies there, with the Muslim leaders, not the Muslim masses.
Abu Bakar Bashir
#89. I've always had a social awareness. My favorite channel on TV is BBC News 24. For a while, I had to have it on repeat in my house. I've always been interested in what's going on in the world.
Douglas Booth
#90. 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
#91. Indeed, it occasionally seems as if the book has attempted to inoculate itself against the prospect of actually being read.
Roger Moorhouse
#92. I had left school at 16, gone to stage school - and, until I was 22, I hadn't really played anyone but myself. Then in 1979, I made a film with Mike Leigh called 'Grownups,' which went out on the BBC, and overnight this new career opened up.
Lesley Manville
#93. The BBC produces wonderful programmes; it also produces a load of old rubbish.
Jonathan Dimbleby
#94. When even the scrupulously detached BBC is exhorting us to talk to God, you know something is going on.
Nick Hornby
#95. 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
#96. China is starting an English-speaking television network around the world, Russia is, Al Jazeera. And the BBC is cutting back on its many language services around the world.
Hillary Clinton
#97. The BBC is a perfect example of uncontrolled growth, [occupying] old churches and manor houses, the old Langham Hotel where Sherlock Holmes once met Moriarty and where this correspondent once shared an office with an 8-foot bathtub.
Morley Safer
#98. Apparently, presenters of BBC shows are supposed to be impartial. I'm not entirely clear what that means. It is sensible that people presenting programmes shouldn't secretly be in the pay of McDonald's, Ukip or the Pipe Smoker of the Year organisation.
David Mitchell
#99. The BBC will always be attacked by whoever is in government. It is that George Bush thing of 'If you're not with us you are against us.'
Graham Norton
#100. There is still an element of the BBC that feels it is somehow wrong, or it will be open to criticism, if it makes more money.
Armando Iannucci
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
