Simon Hoggart Quotes

• When people move from one extreme set of views to embrace another equally batty picture of the world, they expect us to applaud their choice, as if the fact that they have rejected one form of nuttiness somehow validates the screwball views they hold now.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Applaud, Rejected

• When I was collecting material for a political gossip column, and someone said something interesting, I would wait for them to add, ‘and I don’t want to read that in your magazine!’ In which case I wouldn’t use it. But if they didn’t remember to say it, I’d nip off to the loo, write the story up, come back and change the subject.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Collecting, Wait

• What puzzles me is the way that some of the smaller, unknown chateaux imagine that because Chinese millionaires pay ludicrous sums for the great names, they can overcharge for their own inferior fluids. There is no trickledown effect in wine prices.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Inferior, Smaller

• What has always puzzled me is the flexibility of God’s word. For instance, Catholics can now eat meat on Fridays. And limbo has been abolished. How does this work? Who tells them?

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Word, Instance

• We all have our opinions. But I suspect that writers are actually less worth heeding, because they regard themselves as so uniquely important, so culturally sensitive.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Regard, Suspect

• Watching the Commons tribute to Margaret Thatcher was like being suffocated inside a gigantic sticky toffee pudding, but one with nasty bogeys planted inside. There was much of the ‘Margaret Thatcher who was lucky enough to know me,’ especially from her own side of the House.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in House, Pudding

• To be fair to the Inquisition, they only used confessions extracted after the torture had ended, which let them claim that admissions had been freely given; the fact that the torture would have started again if they hadn’t confessed was a minor detail.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Torture, Freely

• There are few tribes more loathsome than the American Right, and their vicious use of the shortcomings in the NHS to attack Barack Obama’s attempts at health reform are a useful reminder.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Reform, Vicious

• The Tory party is like a rugby union match in which all 30 players are wearing the same strip. They’re not sure who they are grabbing round the knees, but they’re having a lot of fun doing it.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Union, Players

• Some government expenditure actually makes a profit. Our theatre leads the world. Loads of tourists must be attracted by the fact that you could spend a week in London doing nothing but visit superb museums and galleries, free.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Expenditure, Loads

• One of the pleasures of staying with friends is that you get to browse their shelves. I always arrive with a book, but I almost never read it. It would be like sitting at their dinner table and opening a packet of sandwiches.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Pleasures, Arrive

• My colleague Bill Keegan has written a very short book (‘Saving the World?’) on an unlikely topic – he is the first economist to try to rehabilitate Gordon Brown.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Gordon, Book

• Life was so much simpler in pre-video days when everyone refused invitations because the ‘Forsyte Saga’ was on. Now we all just have a long list of unwatched shows, all of which, it seems, our friends are raving about. I feel as outdated as if I wore a Fair Isle sweater, ate Pot Noodle and had a two-bar electric fire in the sitting room.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Refused, Electric

• Jim Sheridan, the MP who wants to ban sketchwriters from the Commons for being rude about politicians, is a blithering idiot. Sorry, scrub that – clearly a very thoughtful person with whom I might conceivably disagree on some marginal issues. A blithering savant, perhaps.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Jim, Whom

• 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

  Topics in Sad

  Tags in Boyish, Weapons

• I’ve been intrigued by ‘Le Monde’ ever since work took me to Paris once, and I noted that on a day when there was some huge worldwide story, the paper led its front page on some cabinet changes in Turkey. It implied a magnificent disdain for the quotidian folderol of mere news.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Magnificent, Cabinet

• I think Tony Blair has to come down on one side or the other. You can’t be a half-hearted supporter of the possible attack on Iraq. You’re either with George Bush or you’re against him.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Supporter, Either

• I think the great thing about grandparents is seeing another home, realising that people you love can have different priorities, different diversions, different opinions and lead quite different lives from the ones you see every day, and that is immensely valuable.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Valuable, Every Day

• I cannot be alone in being pretty nauseated by Red Nose Day, or at least its television manifestation. Do I think that wretchedly poor children in Africa should get food and life-saving drugs? Of course. Do I want to be hectored into contributing by celebrities who earn more in a 10-minute slot than many of these families get in a year? Nope.

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Celebrities, Contributing

• I also learned to play Fruit Ninja on an iPad. It is quite hypnotic, and I hope one day to get past 100 points. I remembered that David Cameron admits to being an addict. I wonder if it helps him in his work. ‘Great, just destroyed a pineapple! Reminds me, shall we send those grenades to the Syrian rebels?’

  Simon Hoggart

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fruit, Destroyed

Simon Hoggart (52)

Birth:	26th May, 1946
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Journalist, Writer

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Today's Anniversary - 21st November

Births

• 1844 - Ada Cambridge
• 1870 - Mary Johnston
• 1912 - Eleanor Powell
• 1937 - Marlo Thomas
• 1952 - Lorna Luft

Deaths

• 1945 - Robert Benchley
• 1926 - Joseph McKenna
• 1969 - Norman Lindsay
• 1996 - Mohammad Abdus Salam
• 1999 - Quentin Crisp