Top 155 Telly Quotes

My younger self would be proud that I’d made it and that someone with my accent had got on the radio and telly. It would make her happy that I’d stuck to my guns.

At yoga you get some sense of spiritual space so that people don’t intrude. You can go there and close your eyes and no one will talk to you. People are too worried about not fainting to bother with some bloke who was on the telly.

Work wise, as a stunt woman, I enjoy telly – or TV – because – and, as an actor – I kind of enjoy the urgency of it. I enjoy the problem-solving that’s happening. Right now, we don’t have time to rehearse for hours. And, if something goes wrong, we don’t have time to shoot something else for four days until we sort it out.

When I’m on tour I just ring up the theatres, book it and go on. You can pretty much go on tour when you want but you can’t just make a telly show when you want.

I don’t get holiday, I’m self-employed. That’s a really big risk for anyone in telly.

I want to go to Denmark and Scandinavia. We’ve been inundated with their telly recently, and I’ve never been to any of those countries. I really want to get to know the people. I quite fancy living there for a bit if I could take a month off. They just seem like upfront, friendly folk.

I haven’t really got much get up and go. I can’t believe I’m on the telly. I’m so lazy.

I don’t normally watch myself on the telly.

I think it’s always difficult to get a show on telly, whether you’re George Clooney or just starting out. But there’s room. If you’re into it, chase it. You’ll get it.

I was a latchkey kid. Every afternoon, I would walk home from school, let myself in, make myself a banana buttie, and watch telly until Mum came home.

People say I’m a celebrity chef, and I am on telly a lot but that’s because I judge contests. Perhaps I’m more of a celebrity eater than a cook.

When we first did ‘Big Night Out,’ there was no chance of someone doing a little show in a pub then being on telly. There was a little Oxbridge route in and an old-fashioned variety route.

Despite being a business journalist at the BBC for ten years, working behind the scenes on our high-profile news programmes, I was viewed by some in the organisation to be ‘too common for telly.’

One thing Aussie telly does well is slightly different versions of programmes we’ve made. The trailers for ‘Celebrity Splash’ prove they don’t just pick the good stuff either.

By early 1971, I had been acting professionally for 18 months – theatre work and my first telly, an episode of ‘Dr. Who.’

Where I get bored is when I show up for a shoot and they want me to wear a feather boa. Too obvious a thing for a poof on the telly to do.

I’m quite happy sat in front of the telly watching everything on Sky, Netflix, Amazon Prime. And the one called Roku. I’ve got the lot.

Swimmers do not get a lot of telly time so you are not dealing with a lot of egos.

The films, the music, the telly that I like is always a little bit more on the margins.

I don’t want people turning on the telly and going, ‘Dear God, not him again.’

Despite some of the stories that have gone around, I’ve never had a big, flouncey strop about how much I’m paid. Considering I have a pretty interesting life out of making telly, I’m really paid quite well for it. So I’m not complaining.

I’d hate to be really beautiful on telly and then have everyone go, ‘It’s all make-up and lighting.’

I’ve written four jokes ever about cakes. But because they were show jokes, they were on the telly a lot. And everywhere I go people give me cupcakes. I don’t eat them, I give them away.

The nicest thing people can say about us, is, ‘I turn the telly on for half an hour and go off with me mates, having a laugh.’

Some people are instantly brilliant. The Kenneth Branaghs of this world are ready-formed actors at 23 – he has used his success in lots of different ways – but there are people out there for whom acting is: ‘Ooh, I can get on the telly and be famous.’

With the likes of social media and outside influences – we’re going to be on telly a lot more – I think it’s important that you listen to the right people, whether it’s your team-mates, your parents, or your coaches, and don’t take too much to heart.

I only like doing live telly. It’s great because you go in and do it and then go home. No edit, no retakes.

I always said it was a privilege to end up on the television. It wasn’t my ambition; I fell into editing magazines and writing about cars, and then I ended up on the telly.

I always wanted to get on the telly. Then see when I did, and there was talk about doing more online, Comedy Labs or iPlayer, I was: ‘Naw, naw, naw, I want to be On The Telly that sits in the living room and folk watch it together.

I want to watch telly that reflects the world I see.

My mum, who comes from Goa, wanted us to develop our minds when we were kids, so she used to turn the electricity off at weekends so we couldn’t sit watching the telly.

I know people judge me from the shows I’ve been on, but I was growing up on telly, making mistakes, saying stupid things.

There’s so much to see and do in Austrailia, but a lot of it is outside so I’ve ben immersing myself in their telly.

At the time I left film school there wasn’t a lot of hope for young film-makers. It was a calling card of film school to be quite slick and commercial, which might lead to getting some stuff on telly.

You can’t have it all one way – be on the telly and the radio and make lots of money – and not offer anything to your followers when they need you.

I would like to have a go at TV. I think, especially when you have kids, that you spend a lot of time watching telly, and you think, ‘How come I’m not doing that?’

People think I work a lot more than I do. I think because you’re in people’s living rooms every day they’re like: ‘Oh my God, you’re always on the telly,’ but it’s like, ‘Yeah but you always have to go to work every day nine till five whereas I finish at 12:30 P.M. and then I’m home.’

I did four or five years in telly, and by the end of it was drained. I was a bit sick of myself. I didn’t feel like an actor anymore. That sounds silly, but when you’re doing a play you’re using different muscles, and it blew all the cobwebs away.

My grandparents lived with us. And I remember watching ‘Doctor Who’ with my granddad on his new telly. These were the days before remote controls but my granddad, being quite a resourceful sort of chap, had fashioned his own remote control – which was a length of bamboo pole with a bit of cork that he’d glued on the end.

Most people I was at school with, if they saw me on telly, wouldn’t know I’d been at school with them.

If people think I am a failure because I am not on telly every day, that is their problem.

It’s best, I think, to treat stand-up comedy on the telly like tapas: small tasters of something you’d love a proper plate of.

I don’t think I’d want to be a comedian today if I saw it on the telly. I wouldn’t think it was a thing for weirdoes and drop-outs; I’d think it was a thing for squares who wanted to be famous.

Every footballer wants to play in big games, in front of full houses, live on the telly.

Theatre has always been better disposed to colourblind casting than telly or film. Given that most television is contemporary, and it reaches 56 million people, I am disappointed there still isn’t more representation.

I’d like to do radio forever, really. I prefer it to telly. It’s more immediate and I’m in control of it all.

Without that real spectacle of a big, noisy St James’ Park or Old Trafford or the Emirates, the certain beauty of watching a game of football even live on the telly is not the same as far as I’m concerned.

All my interesting stories are from before I was on television. Nothing interesting has happened to me since then. Maybe it’s because the most interesting thing in my life is the show and that’s on telly.

I wouldn’t want to leave it so long before doing a play again, I get very stolid and sluggish if I do too much telly.

I watch schlock telly. Like the ‘Kardashians.’ I love it. It’s my guilty pleasure.

I’ve turned up to auditions and seen faces that I recognise and I think I know them. Then I realise I know them because they are on the telly.

I like the fact that in the theatre nothing is ever finished because you’re going to do it all over again tomorrow, whereas in telly once it’s wrapped and in the can, that’s it.

A guy playing pool in a pub once said to me that they should put me on the telly. It went in one ear and out the other. But then I started thinking about it. I wondered how it all worked, did you have to be best mates with someone at the BBC who you went to uni with in Oxford?

The more telly you do, the more it feels like a factory.

People always ask me if I’m best friends with everyone I work with in telly – but no, not everyone you work with is your friend.

I have never had a problem with not being able to do anything just because I am on telly every day.

I don’t have a problem with the concept of a box set per se – we have many of them merrily lined up on the shelf above the telly. No, what gives me the pip is the fact that I’m never going to watch any of them.