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Technically, the Hurricane might have been able to win the Battle of Britain on its own. But for keeping up the spirits of the people on the ground while running rings round anything the Third Reich could throw at it? That was the job of the Spitfire, a symbol of British brilliance, a symbol of hope.
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I have had an amazingly fortunate life. I'm a child from Yorkshire, which is sort of like Cleveland without the pretty bits.
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Argentina and Burma. I have been to most of the countries in the world, but not those two. I want to shoot doves in Argentina. Burma, of course, because no one has really been there.
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I dish the dirt out and I can take it. But why should my mother and children have to take it?
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Column writing is like gas - it fills the available space.
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The newest Ferrari of them all, the 458, the Italia. The GT3 was good, but nowhen near as good as this... almost nothing on Earth is as good as this... Set that something I've just told, involving Cameron Diaz... and some honey... then it comes that even that isn't as good as this.
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Funnily enough, Daihatsu are one of the better interior stylists. God knows how they do it.
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The job of dedicated missile boats is to pootle about, like mice in carpet slippers, waiting for an order to destroy an entire continent.
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Tourists do not come here for our weather, or for the quality of our provincial cooking. Nor are they attracted by the exceptional value of our hotels, our beaches, or Birmingham. I've never met an American or a Japanese person who has said: 'I want to come to Britain so I can buy an Arabic newspaper from a Bengali store where the Cashier speaks Polish.'
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I don't think I am particularly funny. In fact, I know I'm not.
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I dish the dirt out, and I can take it. But why should my mother and children have to take it? In 20 years, I have taken any number of stories, most of which are not true, without a murmur of complaint. But some stories you have to draw the line and say No.
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If you're thinking of coming to America, this is what it's like: you've got your Comfort Inn, you've got your Best Western, and you've got your Red Lobster where you eat. Everybody's very fat, everybody's very stupid and everybody's very rude - it's not a holiday programme, it's the truth.
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I like to be loved by my children, and I quite like the 'Guardian' hating me. I like it when I read they want me to die painfully. Then I think I've really got under their skin. It's like annoying a teacher. Once they've shown signs of weakness, you really can go for them.
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Ambition is a very dangerous thing because either you achieve it and your life ends prematurely, or you don't, in which case your life is a constant source of disappointment. You must never have ambition.
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Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder. That's a lot of effort in a day.
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When the Argentine light cruiser Belgrano was hit by two torpedoes from the snout of Conqueror, a British hunter-killer, the enemy escort ships immediately gave chase. They were out of ideas after just five miles. The Royal Navy vessel had approached unseen, fired unseen, and simply disappeared.
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The Falcon was forever going wrong. Time and again Han and his rebel cohorts would have to bang on the dashboard with their fists to get some wayward system working. And this too helped give the ship a flawed, almost human quality. This is something I look for in all machines...
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Small boys everywhere know that in a fight between Superman, James Bond and the Terminator, James Bond would win. Well, it's the same story in Star Wars. In a fight between the Enterprise, Stingray, Thunderbird 2 and the Millennium Falcon, the Falcon would reign supreme. It just would. The end.
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I think people who watch 'Top Gear' think they're the only ones watching it, which I quite like, because it can hopefully last for a long time.
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It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more.
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Hurricane Katrina didn't just knock a few bricks from the fabric of a levee. More importantly, it knocked a few bricks also from the notion that America is a shining beacon of hope for a troubled world.It isn't. It's a house of straw. With no education to glue that straw together.
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I have a pathological terror of falling through ice. I nearly drowned once. I fell off a boat and got a cramp, and was rescued by an oil-rig diver, a great bear of a man who simply leant into the water and scooped me out with one finger.
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I think it’s a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit.
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You really could call the new TVR Cerbera heavy metal were it not fashioned from plastic. The best way to experience this car is to be about seven miles away. As it comes toward you, it's like being in a horror movie. The monster is getting closer. The Thing. The Blob. Terror has no shape. But God, what a noise.