You can call me the bad boy chef all you want. I’m not going to freak out about it. I’m not that bad. I’m certainly not a boy, and it’s been a while since I’ve been a chef.

I know I’m more on television, and I’m more recognisable than maybe even the players because they run and train, but I just stand there, and my face does all these funny things that everyone can see all the time.

I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything going on on the outside!

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a duke in a past life.

I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It’s not a job, it’s a passion. When you become good at it, it’s a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.

A lot of people think I’m a comedian.

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

If we weren’t all crazy, we’d just go insane.

Politics is applesauce.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that’s it.

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV.

I don’t think comedy will ever die.

I don’t write material. Funny things happen to me in the course of a day, and I just make notes.

All those who believe in psychokinesis – raise my hand.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.

There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

Marrying an old bachelor is like buying second-hand furniture.

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.

When I’m being funny, I try not to offend. I don’t think much of what I’ve done has been in really ghastly taste. I don’t think I have embarrassed many people or distressed them.

I’ve been in love with the same woman for forty-one years. If my wife finds out, she’ll kill me.

My kids are the funniest two human beings there are.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Why can’t I just eat my waffle?

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.

You call yourself what you want to call yourself.

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

Cooking today is a young man’s game, I don’t give a bollocks what anyone says.

I’m half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I’d be in a hell of a mess!

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

In my house I’m the boss, my wife is just the decision maker.

I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.

If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of congress.

I’m not trying to take New York by storm. I just want to sneak in there, keep my head down, batten down the hatches and cook.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

Stand-up is hard.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

I am not gay, but if I were, I would be the first one running out of the closet.

I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

When I was with Andy Warhol, I thought, ‚God, his wig looks cheaper than mine!‘

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.

For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier… I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.