Sandi Toksvig

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The fact is, there is not now, nor has there ever been in the whole of history, a single country in the world where women have equality with men.
- Sandi Toksvig
Collection: Equality
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I haven't got the patience for small talk, although I once saw a woman standing on her own in the corner, and I realised it was Monica Lewinsky, and I had the nicest evening with her - she was charming.
- Sandi Toksvig
Collection: Patience
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I had tried every diet out there - I would lose weight for a bit, then put it back on again.
- Sandi Toksvig
Collection: Diet
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I decided that instead of making jokes about politics, I need to take part in it, and therefore, I can't make jokes and participate.
- Sandi Toksvig
Collection: Politics
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My life won't have full quality until we achieve equality for all.
- Sandi Toksvig
Collection: Equality
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Although I'm sure she's completely charming and delightful, I'm not sure if Kate Middleton might be the best role model. This is a person who has got where she is by marriage, a person whose weight, clothing, hair we worry about - we don't worry about what she's thinking.
- Sandi Toksvig
Collection: Marriage
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No matter how far I travel from Denmark, I still miss the food, so ScandiKitchen in Great Titchfield Street in central London is an essential part of my life.
- Sandi Toksvig
Collection: Travel
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My earliest memory is my parents forgetting my fourth birthday. My dad looked up from reading the paper and went, 'Oh my God!' So we went out, and I chose a red scooter.
- Sandi Toksvig
Collection: Birthday
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I think communication should be fun and that we should all worry less about how we say things and more about what we say.
- Sandi Toksvig
Collection: Communication
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Social media, to me, has got out of hand. Why can't we all be nice to each other?
- Sandi Toksvig
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I am passionate about higher education and am hugely impressed by Portsmouth's mission to encourage students from every walk of life to excel.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I went to a physiotherapist, and she said something to me no one has ever said: 'Sandi, you have plantar fasciitis, because you're fat.' I left and sat in my car shaking. She'd told me the truth, which no one else had. It was painful, but I needed to hear it.
- Sandi Toksvig
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The secret to my success is to work seven days a week. It's as disappointing an answer as the one about how to lose weight. Eat less. Sleep less. Very boring.
- Sandi Toksvig
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The truth is I don't really like the world of plastic money: the great chip-and-pin double act of modern payment. I prefer cash. I don't like the idea of some distant clerk nodding each time I make a card purchase and quietly adding to my 'consumer profile.' I'm anti all cards.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I cannot lie on the beach or by a swimming pool. I think I'm too Nordic to like a lot of relentless sun.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I don't think secrets are a good thing. I think they are a cancer of the soul. So I decided to come out.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I'm 57 years old, and I host a quiz show every single day. I got asked in a recent interview, did I feel that hosting a quiz show helps keep my brain sharp? And I asked - would you ask Stephen Fry that question, who is exactly the same age as me? Somehow, I'm managing to stand up and stay cogent despite my incredible age.
- Sandi Toksvig
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Noel Fielding is one of the nicest guys in show business. The first time I met him, I felt like I had met a rather wayward cousin whose take on the world made me laugh.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I can't live without Radio 4. It's worth the entire licence fee. I'm an obsessive listener; I get up, and Radio 4 goes on, but it goes off when 'Thought for the Day' starts, as that's a step too far.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I'm slightly obsessed with women's history, so I'd love to talk to Emily Dickinson or Louisa May Alcott.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I'm trying to get my kids - in particular, my step-daughter Mary, who's 12 - to recommend music to me. You reach a certain age and realise you haven't kept up, but I don't want to fall behind.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I've downloaded the BBC's 'Cranford' with Judi Dench because I like a bit of bonnet acting, and I can turn it on and off without worrying about whether I can follow what's happening.
- Sandi Toksvig
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Don't climb into a fridge. That's my advice.
- Sandi Toksvig
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Us Danes have amazing pastries, but we're not a fat nation.
- Sandi Toksvig
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You can go anywhere in the world, and people's faces light up when they put delicious food in their mouths.
- Sandi Toksvig
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Food is an international language, an expression of love.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I'm political in the sense that there's much to be done, but I'm apolitical in the sense that I don't think there's a party that represents anything I believe in.
- Sandi Toksvig
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When people say, 'There aren't enough women on panel shows,' the answer is to make the host a woman.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I haven't the energy to despise anyone.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I've had a surprising number of near-death experiences: I was nearly blown up by a landmine in Sudan; I was stranded on the Zambezi river at night; I was bucked off a rodeo horse in Arizona and had to be airlifted to hospital; and, worst of all, I once ate a Pot Noodle.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I dislike hatred, offence, unkindness.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I get in a temper with inanimate objects. I can't bear plastic. I do get in a complete rage with something that's been shrink-wrapped.
- Sandi Toksvig
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There are panel shows that struggle to get women on, and that's because the women feel marginalised and stupid and in the edit are often seen just laughing at the boys and not saying anything at all even though I know for a fact in the recording they were clever. I'm not shy at speaking up, but even I, on those shows, am silenced.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I think kids are in your temporary care, and that they probably arrive with pretty much the personalities they're going to have. I grew up in a perfectly traditional family and turned out how I did. I'm not sure there's much that the family can do except lots of love and lots of care and lots of chances for them to develop the best they can.
- Sandi Toksvig
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What I think is if the world is in some difficulty - about climate change, about economics - then we had better make sure that 100 per cent of every brain available on the planet is working at full pelt to try to sort these things out.
- Sandi Toksvig
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Is raising boys different from raising girls? Oh my goodness, yes! It's a different species, and I love them for that.
- Sandi Toksvig
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With my daughters, it didn't matter how much it was not my thing, we went through two truly horrible pink phases. I bought an awful lot of Barbie rubbish, and it was a great day when I was allowed to send Barbie's house to the skip. That was one of the best days of my life.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I've always liked being able to go around incognito in Copenhagen.
- Sandi Toksvig
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The truth is I have never been any good at sport, OK?
- Sandi Toksvig
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I was born gay, OK? I've always known. I don't think my family were the least bit surprised.
- Sandi Toksvig
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When my three children were little, I took them to Rome. On our way to our destination, we went to see the Colosseum and returned to the car to find everything had been stolen. Trying to buy everything for a week, including clothing for three small, very tired children, was a low point in my life.
- Sandi Toksvig
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My wife and I drove across America following the Oregon Trail, which the pioneers once passed along.
- Sandi Toksvig
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Sitting on a plastic chair at night listening to the sea lapping below while sipping a cold beer is about as good as life gets.
- Sandi Toksvig
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Women are not allowed to be polymaths; we're only allowed to do single maths.
- Sandi Toksvig
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Do you know there were two pilots made for 'Have I Got News For You' before the series started two decades ago: one hosted by Angus Deayton and one hosted by me. But I was told that they couldn't have a woman in charge of the news.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I'm quite a shy person, and I dislike narcissism intensely.
- Sandi Toksvig
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I hope I don't have an ego.
- Sandi Toksvig
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If you play-act for a living, it's better not to carry on doing it when you get home.
- Sandi Toksvig
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My ambition is to stop showing off. I'd love to be a tweedy academic. I'd be happy living in a croft. I like making jam. So why am I a semi-public figure?
- Sandi Toksvig
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One of my life's watchwords is 'hyggelig.' It's an untranslatable Danish term for getting together with friends and family and sitting around in a cosy atmosphere with nice food and wine and candles.
- Sandi Toksvig