Craig Brown
Craig Brown
Craig Edward Moncrieff Brownis an English critic and satirist, best known for his parodies in Private Eye...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth23 May 1957
badly hit men playing tend trying
Like many men who play tennis, when I hit a ball into the net, I tend to look daggers at my racket, reproaching it for playing so badly when I myself have been trying so hard.
focus gives less lie opportunity red value
It gives them the opportunity now to focus on the Red Sheds, which is where we think most of the value can lie in this business, so it's one less distraction they've got.
full
Just as there is something about an empty skip that makes you want to fill it, so there is something about a full skip that makes you want to empty it.
admitted brightly coloured discreet good grown seems taste
Over the years, the idea seems to have grown up that brightly coloured flowers are vulgar, and that the only flowers to be admitted to the walled garden of good taste are discreet and pastel-hued.
affect forgotten guys indictment players playing quite resilient suspect
Players are resilient guys and tomorrow, quite frankly, I suspect it'll all be forgotten - after all, they're not playing for Sven, they are playing for England. So to say it could affect their performance, that's an indictment of the players.
enemies journalism turning
Journalism could be described as turning one's enemies into money.
legs michael
Michael Owen - he's got the legs of a salmon.
blessed completing definitely focused good opening press project ready weather
We'll definitely be ready by then. It's been a full-court press to get ready. We've been blessed by some very good weather and everybody, from the very beginning, has been singularly focused on completing the project by opening day.
aged felt oldies school slightly sure though town
When I was a boy, I used to stay with a school friend in Bexhill, in Sussex, which was then well-known for being the town with more oldies than any other. Aged ten, I felt slightly embarrassed by this, though I'm not sure why.
good strewn writers wrote
Some of the most untidy writers have also been the most productive. Iris Murdoch, for instance, wrote a good 30 books in a house strewn with rubbish.
bowler persist pinch wearing
Like the periwig and the bowler bat, the plus-four and the bow-tie, the blazer is on the way out, and those who persist in wearing it do so with a smattering of self-consciousness, a touch of obstinacy, even a pinch of camp.
children frightened next perfectly
Children are perfectly happy to sit next to spiders; it is only grown-ups who are frightened away.
catty consummate literary
Historians are the consummate hairdressers of the literary world: cooing in public, catty in private.
deciding five further good minutes speaking spend ten whether
Speaking for myself, I spend a good ten minutes a day deciding whether or not to read the results of new surveys, and, once I have read them, a further five minutes deciding whether or not to take them seriously.