Craig Brown > Quotes

“It is Cinderella in reverse. It is hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled. Nothing is as thrilling as they said it would be: no one is amusing, as clever, as attractive or as interesting. The sun never shines as bright as it used to, and even the fiercest thunderstorm lacks any real sense of drama or pizzaz. As the curtain falls, Group Captain Charming has left her for someone more suitable and has gone to live in France, and Buttons, in his zip-up jumpsuit, has taken up with a wearying succession of younger lovers. When Cinderella dies, her little glass slipper is put up for auction, a memento of days of hope and innocence. The catalogue entry reads: 'Only worn once.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“John was angular, slapdash, maudlin, difficult, lazy, dissonant, edgy, sardonic, pessimistic, solipsistic, sulky, cool, brutal”
― Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

“Paul considered himself lovable; John believed himself unlovable.”
― Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

“True to character, John Lennon taunted him about the memoir. When Epstein was wondering out loud what to call it, Lennon said: ‘Why don’t you call it “Queer Jew”?’ Later, when Epstein said it was called ‘A Cellarful of Noise’, Lennon replied that he would be better off calling it ‘A Cellarful of Boys’.”
― Craig Brown, Haywire: The Best of Craig Brown

“Margaret thought the world cruel for seeing her as the negative version of her sister, yet it was also how she came to define herself. (...) On one side she was given an inflated sense of her own value, while on the other her confidence was continually undermined by comparisons with her sister. She was very spoilt and indulged and made to feel a very special person indeed, while simultaneously being given clearly to understand that it was her sister who was important.

She remained conscious of the image of the one who wasn’t and to some extent played on it: the one who wasn’t the queen, the one who wasn't taught constitutional history, because she wasn’t the one who’d be needing it; the one who wasn’t in the first coach and wouldn’t ever be the first onto Buckingham Palace balcony; the one who wasn’t given the important duties, but was obliged to make do with the also-rans.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“For young people, long hair came to symbolise freedom, even happiness. ‘If my hair seems a little on the long side it’s because the idea became implanted in my brain at a very early age: long hair equals happiness.”
― Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

“Together, the two boys conspired to upend their grief, to turn the wound into a weapon.”
― Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

“Princess Margaret felt most at home in the company of the camp: the cultured and the waspish. It was to be her misfortune that such a high proportion of them kept diaries and moreover, diaries written with a view to publication. To a man they were mesmerised less by her image than by the cracks to be found in it.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“A Day in the Life’ lasts 5 minutes 34 seconds. It had taken, in all, thirty-four hours to record. Four years earlier, the entire recording of the Beatles’ first album, Please Please Me, was all done and dusted in a day.”
― Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

“I felt the same sense of squeamishness on behalf of Frankie Howerd. In life, the great comedian was always embarrassed by his baldness, so took to wearing a singularly ill-fitting toupee. ‘He was the only one convinced that it was practically impossible to see the join,’ observed his biographer, Graham McCann.”
― Craig Brown, Haywire: The Best of Craig Brown

“John Cleese once remarked that every young comic plays the character he dreads becoming.”
― Craig Brown

“when Benn kicks off a conversation with Gorbachev by saying he was in Parliament for fifty years, Gorby simply replies, ‘How boring that must have been!”
― Craig Brown, Haywire: The Best of Craig Brown

“I have never known an unhappier woman”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Years later, he told a close friend he’d had sex of some sort with Brian, “once to see what it was like, the second time to make sure I didn’t like it”.”
― Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

“Benn mentioned a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador: ‘I said, “I’m a great admirer of Mao. He made mistakes, because everybody does, but it seems to me that the development of the countryside and so on was very sensible …”’ As it happens, forty-five million died as a result of Mao’s enforced famines in the countryside.”
― Craig Brown, Haywire: The Best of Craig Brown

“Paul once tried to explain how the two of them had become what they were. ‘John, because of his upbringing and his unstable family life, had to be hard, witty, always ready for the cover-up, ready for the riposte, ready with the sharp little witticism. Whereas with my rather comfortable upbringing, a lot of family, a lot of people, very northern, “Cup of tea, love?”, my surface grew to be easy-going. Put people at their ease. Chat to people, be nice, it’s nice to be nice … Mentally, no one could say much to hurt me, whereas with John: his dad wasn’t home, so it was “Where’s yer dad, you bastard?” And his mother lived with somebody and that was called “living in sin” in those days, so there was another cheap shot against him. John had a lot to guard against, and it formed his personality; he was a very guarded person … He had massive hang-ups from his upbringing.”
― Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

“Most of his opinions were really just excuses for jokes about the absurdity of having opinions.”
― Craig Brown, Haywire: The Best of Craig Brown

“It was inevitable; when there are two sisters and one is the Queen who must be the source of honour and all that is good while the other must be the focus of the most creative malice, the evil sister.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Only those who are too cowardly or conceited to have their ideas of the world challenged by jokes – in short, only those without a sense of humour – could fail to see that this was the whole point of him.”
― Craig Brown, Haywire: The Best of Craig Brown

“John was in no mood for compromise; his intransigence towards Paul may also have been a way of subcontracting his own Oedipal struggles: ‘I was always saying, “Face up to your dad, tell him to fuck off. He can’t hit you. He’s an old man” … But Paul would always give in. His dad told him to get a job, he dropped the group and started working on the lorries, saying, “I need a steady career.” We couldn’t believe it. I told him on the phone, “Either come or you’re out.” So he had to make a decision between me and his dad …”
― Craig Brown, One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time

“The two of them, the group captain and the princess had called it a day.four years before when she was 25 years old. But when you are royal, nothing is allowed to be forgotten. That is the price to pay for being part of history.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret