“As a result of my life on the road and the increasing number of rainy afternoons in cinemas, I began to get the idea that I might write a film.”

“Friends often tell me how much their grandchildren enjoy 'Are You Being Served?' It doesn't matter that they were not even born when it was broadcast, or that they belong to a very different world.”

“I knew I had arrived when taxi drivers would say, 'You're that twit on the Billy Cotton Show, aren't you?'”

“Laughter crosses boundaries of class and age... Humour is universal.”

“My first failure was to be born a child not wanted by his father or mother, as they parted shortly after I was born.”

“You never write a catchphrase; you never write something and say, 'This is going to be a catchphrase.' You just write the show, and then in the course of the show, somebody says something, and for some reason it gets a laugh.”