Denis Norden
Denis Norden
Denis Mostyn Norden, CBEis a retired English comedy writer and television presenter. After an early career working in cinemas, he began scriptwriting during the Second World War. From 1948 to 1959, he co-wrote the successful BBC Radio comedy programme Take It From Here with Frank Muir. Muir and Norden remained associated for more than 50 years: after they stopped collaborating on scripts, they appeared regularly together on radio panel programmes My Word! and My Music...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionRadio Host
Date of Birth6 February 1922
There's an unseen force which lets birds know when you've just washed your car.
Then after that came word processors and it's hard to make those laugh.
It's like your children talking about holidays, you find they have a quite different memory of it from you. Perhaps everything is not how it is, but how it's remembered.
Dictum on television scripts: We don't want it good - we want it Tuesday.
A counter tenor is anyone who can count to ten.
I defy anyone to get a decision that quickly these days.
I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.
The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up.
What is a harp but an oversized cheese slicer with cultural pretensions?
If the laughter of the audience was malicious we wouldn't show it.
You know you're getting old when a four-letter word for something pleasurable two people can do in bed together is R-E-A-D.
Middle age is when, whenever you go on holiday, you pack a sweater.
If all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players, where do all the audiences come from?
And when you're on your own there is that terrifying possibility that you may be the only person on the planet who thinks it's funny - and you have no way of finding out.