Top 66 Gavin Esler Quotes

Mini-skirts, Prada and Agnes B are for New York and L.A. Washington is more America’s equivalent of Marks & Spencer.

Viewers don’t like rudeness, but they like us to be persistent.

International politics attracts politicians who talk a good game, but whose achievements are often slender.

Americans, apparently, either do nothing about the world’s problems, in which case they are ignorant and isolationist, selfish and gutless, or they try to do something about the world’s problems, in which case they are arrogant and naive, greedy and bullying.

Nobody is infallible, but it is important to have trusted guides when it comes to information.

A celebrity can gain attention in our otherwise busy lives. And celebrity sells.

I’ve always been a fan of the Overton Window. It’s not a piece of glass but a political theory named after the conservative American political analyst, Joseph P Overton.

The skills necessary to change nappies or negotiate Brexit are obviously very different, but both involve a great deal of trust in the competence of the people doing the job.

As journalists we are sceptical by nature, but there are some things you take on trust.

During my childhood in the Cold War, my family saw America as a great ally in our common struggle to keep back Soviet communism.

We need to create a sense of shame about racism, and about leaders who deliberately mislead and lie.

A Jethro Tull album was – along with Cream and Led Zeppelin – one of the first I ever bought.

We’re never encouraged by the producers to ask questions in any way. The most important thing to be is authentic and to be yourself. If I feel someone has answered a question then I’ll move on. If I feel it’s important enough, I will pursue the question.

My taste in coffee has got better with age, and so has my taste in music.

A magazine once asked my favourite beauty product and I said water.

Grits really are food for the soul.

From Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos to Google and Facebook, many of America’s greatest entrepreneurs, musicians, movie directors and novelists are world beaters.

This is the only life I’m ever going to have, so shouldn’t I at least try to be happy?

I cry at births and not at funerals.

London thrives because it is one of the most open cities in the world, but Brexit is shutting the door on talented people coming to live and work here – the people we need when we get sick, the ones we see on the Tube, our friends and neighbours. Even worse, it has made London a less tolerant place.

I never have met any heroes – except one. The exception is Ian Anderson, flute player extraordinaire, creative musical talent for more than 40 years, and the man most associated with the band Jethro Tull.

The very idea of a Party of God, Hizbollah, puts the fear of God into British hearts.

I spent the first three years of my life with my parents, grandmother and two aunties in a tiny council house in Glasgow.

The thing I love most about going to the Rocky Mountain National Park is that mobile phones don’t work, and there’s no electricity and no TV.

My idea of heaven is being in Arizona, stuck up a mountain – somewhere where there are no phones.

Populism, literally, means speaking for ‘the people.’ In practice it means demagoguery.

Nigel Farage has got some strengths. He really connects with people. He is a very good talker. I find him very affable. I would very happily buy him a beer. And I am sure he would be happy with it to.

Every year I go to Denver, usually between June and August. I hire a car and head up to the Rocky Mountain National Park, about a three-hour drive. It’s my idea of heaven on earth and just talking about it puts me in a good mood.

Ronald Reagan offered us an international vision divided between the free world and the evil empire. Even if this was a cartoonish view, it helped us make sense of everything from Star Wars to industrial policy.

I am the typical British aspiring working class. To be called ‘elite’ by people who have inherited wealth and run hedge funds or worked in the City of London, I don’t criticise them for it, but the idea is frankly laughable. Just ridiculous.

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is now a good friend, and the thing that strikes you about him is that he’s all about details.

Presidents at the end of their second term – Reagan with the Iran-contra affair, Clinton with Monica Lewinsky – often find they are bedevilled by hostile Congressional investigations.

There’s no doubt that prog rock has an image problem: many musicians hate the label, and too many people associate it with 10-minute drum solos and the weirder bits of JRR Tolkien.

Leaders of organisations, political parties and large businesses frequently fail to talk in a straight and entirely truthful fashion.

I’ve never learned to speak a foreign language with ease.

Public displays of puritanical religiosity mask the private perversions of the real Washington behind closed doors.

There are people who appear on television who are paid for by shadowy think tanks whose financing they won’t come clean about.

Anyone who goes through divorce goes through a very hard time.

I’m not anti-American. But I am very strongly anti American bacon – the worst bacon in the world.

When I do look at myself, I see someone who is fundamentally optimistic. Quite a lot of what I do in my television work involves the less than pleasant aspects of human nature, yet I’m never pessimistic.

Democratic government is difficult. It is much more difficult than populists claim. It’s not like running a business or a police force. It demands compromise.

As a teenager in Scotland, I had American friends, sons and daughters of officers at a U.S. Air Force base.

The Cold War, Bosnia and Ukraine remind us that peace is fragile. Iraq and Syria remind us that no society or culture is immune from conflict.

It’s perhaps easier to say what prog rock isn’t than what it is: it’s not three-minute pop songs, it’s not straightforward rock, metal, blues or jazz, but can have elements of all them and more. It’s a form that is on the boundaries of many different forms, that is open to all sorts of influences.

I can be incredibly stubborn and I’m not sure how that reflects in my looks. The family name is German and translates as donkey! If I think I’m right, I hope I don’t seem grumpy.

Maybe because I’ve worked in the BBC for so long I am completely allergic to meetings.

In years of interviewing presidents, prime ministers and chief executives all over the world, I can remember only a handful of times in which a leader has said: ‘I don’t know’ in answer to a question. Perhaps everyone I have ever interviewed knows everything about everything, but I doubt it.

There is so much unreliable information on the internet and in the media.

The country I live in is never clear about its name. My passport says ‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,’ and citizens of the U.K. may call themselves British, English, Scottish, Welsh or from Northern Ireland.

I have my mother’s nose and my father’s bone structure, which I’ve passed on to my children. My eldest daughter and my mother, when she was young, could be sisters.

If we have to put music into baskets, then the progressive rock bands I fell in love with as a teenager made sounds that shaded into jazz, folk, metal, and in the case of the wonderful (and sadly missed) Jon Lord, modern classical music.

Once upon a time, America was a self-reliant John Wayne society where a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Now, America has become an over-lawyered society where nobody takes responsibility for mistakes because it is more profitable to claim victimhood and reach for a lawyer.

I mostly like politicians. Very few of them are evil, although quite a lot are delusional.

I want to stop Brexit.

When I visit universities in the U.A.E., the U.S. and across Europe, I see the faces of the leaders of tomorrow.

Amateurism has its place in government, in journalism and also on the tennis court, but lack of expertise means politicians routinely promise far more than they achieve.

Personally, I hope that we British continue to criticise America – just as I hope Americans will criticise us. That is what friends do.

My alphabet book at Duddingston Primary, Edinburgh, began traditionally with ‘a is for apple,’ but when it came to ‘g,’ it was ‘g is for gas globe.’ This was in the late Fifties; there hadn’t been gas globes for decades. The textbook must have been 30 or 40 years old!

One of my American heroes is the great former U.S. diplomat George Kennan.

The U.S. Constitution has absorbed the end of slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights and Watergate.

Donald Trump’s tweets attract ridicule from some. But clearly they communicate effectively with his millions of supporters.

Doctors, dentists and nurses commonly take out malpractice insurance to pay for lawsuits. The trend has expanded to include hairdressers, accountants, vets, sports umpires and members of the clergy, all fearful of being sued for wrongful action or advice.

There is a common British delusion that we ‘understand’ America. We don’t. Watching ‘Friends’ listening to Bruce Springsteen, eating at McDonald’s and visiting Disneyland does not do it.