Witticisms

 Settling Scores

"So boring you fell asleep halfway through her name."

(Alan Bennett on writer Arianna Stassinopoulos)

A Boor Asleep
Adriaen Brouwer (1605/1606- 1638)
Photo Credit: The Wallace Collection [CC BY-NC-ND]

"Hang on, I'll just check my diary... Oh dear, I find I'm watching television that night."

(Peter Cook when asked by David Frost to attend a dinner party with Prince Andrew.)

Professionals

"The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too."

(Anton Chekov)

Cricketers

"Would you like  me to bowl you a piano and see if you can play that?"

(Merv Hughes to Graham Gooch)

Shane Warne: "I've been waiting two years for another chance to bowl at you."

Daryll Cullinan: "Looks like you spent it eating."

Actors

"Dear Ingrid - speaks five languages and can't act in any of them."

(Sir John Gielgud on Ingrid Bergman)

"You can count on Errol Flynn. He'll always let you down."

(David Niven)

Politicians

"A modest man with much to be modest about.

(Winston Churchill on Clement Atlee)

"When I came to the Treasury, they predicted to me that I would become the most unpopular man in Britain. This was the only correct forecast the Treasury made in the several years I was chancellor."

(Norman Lamont)

Art and Music

"Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects, such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art."

(Tom Stoppard)

The way we live now

"Anyone going slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac."

(Jerry Seinfeld on drivers)

(The Knowledge Book of Insults, Jon Connell)