Top 100 Quotes About The Bbc
#1. Before I joined the BBC I was, like most of the intelligentsia, prejudiced not only against that institution but against broadcasting in general.
Louis MacNeice
#2. 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
#3. I don't think the BBC supporting digital switchover is top slicing. Top slicing is putting the license fee up for grabs for other broadcasters to bid for.
Jeremy Hunt
#4. I sat on the floor and watched TV
Thanking Christ for the BBC
A stupid fucking place to be
Down Rain Street
Shane MacGowan
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. When I was a kid, I wrote to the BBC, and the producers sent me a huge package through the post with 'Doctor Who' scripts. I'd never even seen a script and couldn't believe that they actually wrote this stuff down. It sort of opened a door.
Peter Capaldi
#10. 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
#11. The BBC did a survey of the top 50 things to do before we die. Not while we're still alive, before we die.
Bill Bailey
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. People in the BBC are always dying to get out of their open-plan offices.
Andrew Davies
#19. 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
#20. The BBC knew I was successful from early on, but they weren't sure why, and they still aren't sure. What I do has been unconventional from the beginning, so they've never been sure. It just works. It just does.
Terry Wogan
#21. 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
#22. 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.
Rory Bremner
#23. 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
#24. The BBC can be infuriating at times but I love it with a passion.
John Sweeney
#25. It's only because you can now watch cheerfully biased Fox News that you begin to realize how cheerlessly biased CNN really is - and always was. Or CBS. Or ABC. Or the BBC.
Andrew Sullivan
#26. 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
#27. [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
#28. When I was a young kid, the best stuff on television was always the BBC period dramas - it was what we sat down as a family to watch and what people talked about and looked forward to.
Neil Jackson
#29. 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
#30. That's what I think is smart about 'Durham County.' It's not derivative of anything American. It's more in the vein of the BBC miniseries I grew up with.
Michelle Forbes
#31. The BBC is very good at period drama - world-famous for getting the details right.
Lynne Reid Banks
#32. 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
#33. The BBC is another part of the destruction of Great Britain.
Norman Tebbit
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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.
Les Dawson
#37. The word conservative is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.
Norman Tebbit
#38. 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
#39. 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
#41. No, solitude did not trouble her. She could spend long minutes gazing out the window, hours listening to the BBC on the public radio station. She relished the very texture of her privacy, its depth of space and freedom, much of an entire day hers alone.
Daphne Kalotay
#42. Because of England's lack of social mobility, unless they make truly heroic efforts, writers who are privately educated and then go on to Oxbridge or an institution like the BBC will generally embarrass themselves when they attempt to have a go at working- or lower middle-class characters.
Adrian McKinty
#43. Along with the rest of the establishment, the BBC which, to be fair, can make superb documentaries has swallowed wholesale the lies and distortions about domestic violence promoted by extreme, man-hating feminism through the vehicle of deeply dodgy 'research'.
Melanie Phillips
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. I have been listening to sport and watching sport on the BBC since I was a tiny boy.
Allan McNish
#50. 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
#51. This Tony Haywire guy, whatever his name is, he told the BBC on Sunday that he believes the new oil cap that they've installed will eventually capture the vast majority of oil spewing from the well. You know, if they could capture half the BS spewing from Tony Hayward, people would be thrilled.
Jay Leno
#52. The BBC provides the commentary on our lives, the soundtrack of the nation. It is one of the most powerful unifying forces in the United Kingdom today.
Gavyn Davies
#53. You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music.
Keith Richards
#54. 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
#55. The BBC's aim, along with schools, libraries and literacy groups, to involve more people in reading groups is an exciting idea and one that I hope will keep readers all over the UK exploring and sharing the wonderful world of books.
Tessa Jowell
#56. 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
#57. The BBC sports department when I was there was seriously to the right of Ghengis Khan, and if people think I am strange, they should have met some of the production staff I worked with. Margaret Thatcher and the Queen were the pin up girls for many of them.
David Icke
#58. 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
#59. The establishment is a dirty, dangerous beast, and the BBC is a mouthpiece for that.
Ken Stott
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. I was in Britain that year [1963] and some music publishing people in Denmark Street in London suggested me to the BBC. So I found myself in front of a British television show, which was a nice surprise.
Gordon Lightfoot
#63. The challenge is the culture. You have to have a vision for the BBC-it can't merely be that it's big and has a place in the market.
Jonathan Dimbleby
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds.
Clive James
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. The BBC has the obligation to think big. And at the moment, that clarion call sounds an uncertain note to me.
Jonathan Dimbleby
#70. 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
#71. I'm quite grateful to the BBC. They helped me back onto the touring circuit.
Louise Jameson
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. I would argue that television and particularly the BBC were instrumental in puffing up the Royal Family to a level where they were inflated out of all, all proportion to their relevance on the national scene.
Andrew Morton
#75. That's the first time I've seen sex between two men on the BBC.
Eamon Dunphy
#76. 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
#77. The BBC is part of the glue which binds the United Kingdom together. At those times of national moment - of joy or sadness, in the UK or around the world, at times when the nation wants to celebrate, mourn or just enjoy itself people turn to the BBC.
Gavyn Davies
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. I'd like to do a kind of 'Sunday Night At The Palladium'-style variety show on the BBC.
Anton Du Beke
#81. 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
#82. Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.
Gyorgy Ligeti
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. The BBC, during its 24 hours on the air, plays a very wide range of stuff. And it's not commercial.
Robin Trower
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. In 2010, the BBC spent nearly £230,000 on tea, but only £2000 on biscuits.
John Lloyd
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. When I was under house arrest, it was the BBC that spoke to me - I listened.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. Compared with the BBC's studied neutrality, Fox comes across as a kind of Gong Show of propaganda.
Russ Baker
#98. Yesterday people were going past my window in t shirts and dresses. But that's the men at the BBC for you.
Eddie Mair
#99. 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
#100. One of the things the BBC does better than anyone is period drama.
David Oyelowo
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