Jeremy Hardy
The thing that interests me most about family history is the gap between the things we think we know about our families and the realities.
Instead of people thinking, 'Oh God, look at this terrible refugee crisis; we must do our bit', there's a lot of people thinking, 'How can we get out of doing our bit and find reasons not to provide sanctuary for these people?'
The image of my face I hold in my mind is always about 10 years out of date.
I think ageing suits me because I was born old, like Spencer Tracy or Dolly the Sheep.
Being in the latter stages of life means the morning is unkind to the reflection. It takes a few hours for the creases to fall out. By about 4 P.M., I look quite nice.
My maternal grandmother had what might be described in a school report as a 'lively imagination.' She told us that she was a direct descendant of Sir Christopher Wren.
For me, ancestry is just one thing that connects us to people, and feeling connected to other people is generally a good thing, as long as one kind of connection does not have primacy over all the others. Heredity, race and nationhood are not the best criteria by which to judge our fellow humans.
I love many places to which I have no connection, but identifying an ancestor, or someone I think is an ancestor, has taken me to places I'd never have gone to otherwise.
I'm in the intriguing position of being a friend of Jeremy Corbyn and knowing him personally. It's quite a strange position to know somebody that's in the news and know the person who they're talking about and taking pictures of.
I feel that our attitude to our borders is wrong; it's the first time that an awful lot of people think you can and should just close your border and remain in this splendid isolation.
I tend not to look back on old clips of myself or look at things I wrote or listen to something from the radio 30 years ago: I remember them, but it feels like someone else.
Titles always sound so pretentious, and when I see a comedian, I just want the person to take flight, not stick to one topic or subject.
I'm not terribly ambitious, not terribly driven.
For years, I've mocked Norfolk and King's Lynn, and now I find out I'm from there!
I've always thought I'd like to be something more exotic than C of E. I can't even say I'm lapsed. You don't lose your faith when you are Church of England - you just can't remember where you left it.
I suppose I would like to find out more about my grandparents because I knew them when I was too young to grasp that they were interesting people. They were my grandparents, source of treats.
My idea of family is not dominated by blood ties. Families are fragile things, and I think it is social pressure and emotional attachments that keep them together.
Apparently, some physicists argue that time is curved. I suppose this means that the past is in some way still present.
Chemistry seems to be pretty much nailed down, and biology gains ground all the time. But physics seems to be mired in idle rumination. They think a Big Bang started the universe, but they don't really know.
I've never been able to understand how risk-averse my mum is. She hated conkers, pea shooters, and anything that could have someone's eye out: skipping, swinging on your chair, talking with your mouth full.
I suppose there wasn't a well-worn path into the British space programme because we didn't really have a space programme. Dad was one of the pioneers of it.
At the same time as we were seizing the lands that we turned into Iraq, we were devising an interesting future for our new protectorate in Palestine, and simultaneously trying to pacify Ireland, where we hit upon the solution of partition in 1921, thereby securing a peaceful resolution to the conflict only 86 years later.
I love doing 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue' on Radio 4. It's my favourite thing to do because it's just daft: it's not about the news. It's not about anything.
You can sometimes sneak a political joke in, which is sometimes the most effective place for a political joke - when it's not expected. It's just the most fun thing to do.
I'm writing a movie script about vampires with an animator called Michael Booth.
Marriage is like the witness protection programme: you get all new clothes, you live in the suburbs, and you're not allowed to see your friends anymore.Collection: Clothes
Why don't people just accept that life is sad and cheer up? After all, it's not going to last for ever.Collection: Cheer
The Afghan War has clearly reached a stage similar to that moment at your child's party where you realise you've forgotten to give the other parents a pick up time.Collection: Children
The only way you can ever accuse a Conservative of hypocrisy is if they walk past a homeless person without kicking him in the face.Collection: Past
All socialists have bad backs because we slouch - except when we're watching the news when we sit on the edge of our seats, shout, and wave our arms. Generally we sit hunched, arms crossed in a judgemental way, the whole of our bodies pulled into a frown.Collection: Judgemental
It seems a shallow observation, but... the Tory Conference are not an attractive lot, are they? I mean, if all those people were born in the same village, you'd blame pollution, wouldn't you?Collection: Mean
My daughter wanted a new pair of trainers. I told her You're eleven, make your own!Collection: Daughter
Northern Ireland is part of Ireland, not Britain, as can clearly be seen from aerial photographs.Collection: Photograph
Most harm is done by people who are awake.Collection: People
Capitalism is a great idea in theory, but in practice it just doesn't work.Collection: Practice
If you just took everyone in the BNP and everyone who votes for them and shot them in the back of the head, there would be a brighter future for us all.Collection: Would Be
You can inherit male-pattern baldness from your mother's father, but not a tendency to fight in the First World War.Collection: Mother
The need to compile lists is a personality disorder, as is the need to assert the superiority of some things over other things.Collection: Personality