The Thick of It/Quotes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Malcolm Tucker

"He's as useless as a marzipan dildo."

"Look, people really like it when you go just a bit early! You know; steely jawed, faraway look in your eyes! Before you get to the point when they're sitting round in the pub saying "Oh, that fucker's got to go!", you surprise them! "Blimey, he's gone! I didn't expect that! Resigned? You don't see that much anymore! Old school! Respect! I rather liked the guy! He was hounded out by the fucking press!" How about that, eh? What a way to go!"

"How much fucking shit is there on the menu and what fucking flavour is it?"

"And tell them to get their heads around it before they put pen to paper, or I'll be up their arses like a fucking Biafran ferret, right? Come on, unleash hell!"

"Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, you won't hear any more swearing from us, you MASSIVE! GAY! SHITE! FUCK OFF!"

"Don't you ever, ever call me a bully. I'm so much worse than that."

"If you do think about running with this pill story, I'll personally fucking eviscerate you, right? I mean, I don't have your education, I don't know what that means. But I'll start by ripping your cock off and I'll busk it from there. OK?"

"Well, half an hour you were in with a shot. This is half an hour hence! We've fucking time travelled, yes? We're in a weird and wonderful world where everything is different! Maybe outside the polar ice caps have melted, maybe there's fucking robots knocking about and Davina McCall's the new pope. Maybe you can download rice!"

"Tomorrow, from broadsheets to wank rags, I want pages one, two and three to be a profile of Tom looking like a fucking political colossus. Y'know: Tom meeting the Pope, Tom in an NHS hospital chatting to little, baldie kiddies. I want pages four and five to be a timeline of British politics with me at the center looking fucking indispensable and fucking benign. And I want page six to be... fucking ISRAEL OR SOME BULLSHIT!"

"He’s so dense that light bends around him."

"I’ve got a to-do list that’s longer than a fucking Leonard Cohen song."

"People don't like their politicians to be comfortable. They don't like you having expenses. They don't like you being paid. They'd rather you lived in a fucking cave."

"Doug Hayes is a massive abortion. Again, not a reference to your daughter."

"Do you know 90% of household dust is made of dead human skin? That's what you are to me."

"I'll be with you in two shakes of a crying baby."

"Sacked after twelve months, looks like you've fucked up. Sacked after a week, looks like he's fucked up."

"FUCK'S SAKE! JESUS CHRIST! Well, now we've got another fucking adjective to add to fucking 'smug' and 'glum', haven't we? 'FUCKING RETARDED!' Do you think it would not just be germane to check who you're talking to? IT'S A FUCKING NEWSPAPER OFFICE! IT'S NOT A FUCKING SANATORIUM FOR THE FUCKING DEAF! ARE YOU SO DENSE?! AM I GONNA HAVE TO RUN AROUND SLAPPING BADGES ON PEOPLE WITH A BIG TICK ON SOME AND A BIG CROSS ON OTHERS SO YOU KNOW WHEN TO SHUT YOUR GOB AND WHEN TO OPEN IT?! JESUS CHRIST, THAT'D PROBABLY CONFUSE YOU AS WELL, WOULDN'T IT? THAT'D BE TOO CONFUSING, YOU'D SEE THE CROSS AND GO 'OH, FUCK, X MARKS THE SPOT! I'D BETTER TELL THIS LITTLE PERSON ABOUT THE PRIME MINISTER'S FUCKING CATASTROPHIC ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION!' Oh, but not to worry, not to worry. You've sent fucking Olly over there to deal with it. FUCKING OLLY! HE'S A FUCKING, HE'S A FUCKING KNITTED SCARF, THAT TWAT! HE'S A FUCKING BALACLAVA!"

"You breathe a word of this to anyone, you mincing fucking CUNT, and I will tear your fuckin' skin off, I will wear it to your mother's birthday party and I will rub your nuts up and down her leg whilst whistling Bohemian fuckin' Rhapsody, right? Now get out of my fucking sight!"

[having received a cake with the words "HAPPY BIRTHDAY C*NT"] "This could be from anyone."

"Fuck me! This is like a clown running across a minefield!"

"Are you producing porn for the visually impaired? Because what I'm hearing on my radio is Nicola Murray being roundly fucked."

"This is like The Shawshank Redemption, only with more tunneling through shit and no fucking redemption."

"OF the moment! I said OF the moment! There is a huge difference between me saying "Nicola, I'd like to go for a lovely walk with you" and "Nicola, I'm going to make a hat out of your entrails."

"You stand right there and DO NOT MOVE! Or I will perform a fucking living fucking autopsy on you with a fucking rusty spade and I'll have your kidneys for cufflinks!"

"I fucking love ghee. It's like freebasing butter."

"Yeah, yeah. Andy Murray, Andy Pandy, fucking Ghandi have a hand-shandy, whatever, just fuck off out of my life."

"Well, fuck a Pot Noodle. Sam, prepare my horse. I ride to DoSAC!"

"I went to Spain. Mallorca. Went golfing with Stephen Hawking; he lied about his handicap. Didn't need a golf cart though, I just sat in his lap."

"If you're not a prostitute or a pizza boy, FUCK THE FUCK OFF."

"Philip Schofield, I fuck lobsters for money."

"If you resign, it's political fucking Jenga. You will cause a landslide that will bury this Government. And you'll keep the party in opposition until Daniel Radcliffe is advertising walk-in baths in the fucking Peoples Friend."

"SAM, NO PISSY BISCUITS!"

"I've come across a lot of boring fucks, but none as boring as you. You are a real boring fuck, you know that? Sorry, sorry, I know you disapprove of swearing. You are a boring F star star CUNT."

"Fuckity bye!"

Nicola Murray

"So I'll take your warm congratulations as... implied."

"Fire up the turbo-chargers and set phasers to equality. It's Murray time!"

"It's all just gone really HBO."

"Well, we wanted to go to Florida but Malcolm 'suggested' that we go to Suffolk. So the kids were miserable, the weather was miserable, and Malcolm phoned to shout at me for looking miserable."

"All he's doing is depriving a village somewhere of a twat."

"I am standing in a factory that makes fans, right, and a man has walked in with a giant shit-spraying machine!"

"What we do? Do we go after him with... y'know, one of those things you say... like, a big bum-dildo of vengeance?"

"I'm cooking now! I'm fucking Delia Smith! I'm cracking eggs! I'm pouring in baking powder! I'm using fucking vanilla extract! It's fantastic!"

"No need to stand, as the PM said to me this morning."

"We've got no nuts. DoSAC has no nuts. There's a headline. Please don't use it."

"Bollocky bollocks, it's the Ghost of Christmas Shit."

"Oh, great, I'm flypaper for dickheads today."

"Am I being gang-bollocked? Great double-act, you two. Good cock, bad cock."

"We are a dying government! Our hair's falling out and we're coughing up blood and our kids are asking us to change the will."

"It's going to be like Kill Bill or Get Carter. It's going to be get and kill Nicola and then get Carter and Bill to kill her too."

Hugh Abbott

"I'm not quite sure what level of reality I'm supposed to be operating on."

"I work, I eat, I shower. That's it. Occasionally... I take a dump, just as a sort of treat. I mean, that really is my treat. That's what it's come to. I sit there and I think, 'No, I'm not going to read The New Statesman. This time is just for me. This is quality time just for me.' Is that normal?"

"Following a successful report stage debate, Secretary of State for Social Affairs, Hugh Abbot, today announced, 'I'm the fucking daddy!'."

"They should just clone ministers, you know, so we're born at 55 with no past, and no flats, and no genitals."

"Robyn, all events are regional. Everything that happens in the world has to happen somewhere. Do you see? Even JFK's assassination was a regional event. But it was also very important. Like this factory visit."

"I know this is what they think people like me think, so I hate thinking it, but I just find myself thinking that they're from a different fucking species. You know, with their t-shirts and weird trousers and tabards. Why do they wear clothing with writing on it? And why are they so fat?"

"I think we're lucky that 'citizenship' was the first thing that came to mind. Otherwise we could have been The Department for Social Affairs and Woodland Folk."

"I categorically did not knowingly not tell the truth. Even though unknowingly I might not have done."

Jamie MacDonald

"SHUT IT, LOVE ACTUALLY! DO YOU WANT ME TO HOLE-PUNCH YOUR FACE?!"

"You know me, Malc - kid gloves, but made from real kids."

"You take the piss out of Al Jolson again, and I will remove your iPod from its tiny nano-sheath and push it up your cock. Then I'll put some speakers up your arse and put it on to shuffle with my fucking fist! Then, every time I hear something that I don't like, which will be every time that something comes on, I will skip to the next track by crushing your balls."

"You mean apart from the charge you're gonna get when I clamp jump leads to your baldy bollocks? OK, OK! You, Julius Nicholson, being of sound mind but with a body that looks like a giant sex toy did knowingly do us up the shit-hole by passing confidential information to the enemy! And I am going to have your guts as a skipping rope! And your lungs sun-dried and turned into a little fucking waistcoat!"

Glenn Cullen

"This is a bucket of shit. If someone throws shit at us, we throw shit back at them. We start a shit fight. We throw so much shit back at them that they can't pick up shit, they can't throw shit, they can't do shit."

"Fucking hell! Fuck! Jesus, I'm not a joke, okay, all right, hello? I am a man. I am a man, you know, you know?! This, THIS!!!! THIS IS MY LIFE!!!! I'M A HUMAN BEING, AND ALL THIS IS MY LIFE!! And, it's collapsing in front of me. You know, Tom's like that, they're never going to want me, are they? And fucking Hugh, now, he... Jesus Christ, this is all, I AM A MAN!!!!!! AND, NO YOU DON'T, I'M IRRELEVANT!! NO, NO GO AWAY, I'm irrelevant, I'm irrelevant, I'm irrelevant! FUCKING HUGH JUST WANTS TO SPEAK TO TINKY WINKY?!! WELL FUCK TINKY WINKY, FUCK YOU TINKY WINKY!!! AUF WIEDERSEHEN, PET, THE PARTY'S OVER, GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD, WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT HITLER?! HE HAD A MOUSTACHE AND HE LIVED OVER THERE?!! FUCK US ALL!!!!"

"Tom Rudd is army slang for standing up buggery."

"Elderly aide? That makes me sound like a fucking stairlift."

Ollie Reeder

"I'd like to nail him to a tree through the head and watch lice slowly crawl over his body, eating off the flesh in a slow and painful death. But that rather bitter anomaly aside, most of the responses to the Warwick report press cuttings were pretty positive."

"It is over, you self-serving, crypto-fascist, horse-loving, posh, weekend at daddy's, vacuous nothing!"

[in regards to Malcolm] "He likes to think of himself as more of a thin, white Mugabe."

"You can't overwrite minutes! Well, you specifically can't, because you don't know how to unlock the pdf file."

[to Phil] "This inability to talk without using Lord of the Rings metaphors is one of the very many reasons that we could never be friends."

"He's old and sullen, vote for Cullen?"

"What would you call that? Obsessive Repulsive Disorder?"

Terri Coverley

"We don't exchange insults with bloody Simon arsepipes titty-twat."

"Well it was a bit of a shock for us. In a good way. Like twins or a tax rebate."

"The problem is that if you say to a journalist, 'Can you avoid that topic?' that's when they really go for it. It's like saying to the school bully, 'I'll wet myself if you tickle me.'"

"That is a complete disaster. There will be nothing else on television for weeks now."

Peter Mannion

"Ah, Stewart. What flavour of nut-brown piss are you going to pour in my ear?"

"The Fucker?! And here you thought he was just a myth created to frighten naughty MPs into eating their truffles and squab."

"I'm sensing a change in management styles. From touchy-feely to smashy-testes."

Stewart Pearson

"All right, my children of a lesser god, listen up! There's a file marked 'Snap Election Drill' on the J drive. If you don't know how to access the J drive, turn your pass in at reception, go and buy some silver body paint, and pretend to be a robot on the South Bank. COME ON, FLY, MY PRETTIES, FLY!"

Dialogue

Jamie: [to Ollie] Ey, Poxbridge! Hey dickhead, Happy New Queer!
Malcolm: [to Emma] I'm really sorry. I apologise for my friend’s behaviour. Don't be so offensive. [to Ollie] Did you have a nice Poofmas?

Stewart: Just wondering whether you're fully conversant with the new line. Whether you're really up to speed?
Peter: Well, I don't know, am I? Because I get people stopping me in the street and saying "Are you still for locking up yobbos?" and I say "Yeah, of course we are!" and then I think 'Are we?' because maybe I missed a memo from you. Maybe I should understand yobbos, or not even call them yobbos. Call them young men with issues around stabbing.

Jamie: I'm not leaving it to you. You couldn't organise a bum-rape in a barracks.
Malcolm: Au contraire.

Nicola: She's a bit of a rebel.
Malcolm: What sort of a rebel are we talking about here? A pierced navel, or holidays at Pakistani training camps?
Nicola: (deadpan) It's chiefly heroin. Although she has cut down since getting pregnant by that Nigerian people-smuggler because the track marks would have affected her porn career.

Malcolm: Let's run some tits up the flagpole and see if anyone gets wood.
Nicola: Christ, it's like being trapped in a fucking boys' toilet.

Peter: And speaking of rabies injections...
Malcolm: I didn't know you were still alive. How's the 80's tribute band? Still doing the Robert Palmer lookalike?
Peter: Malcolm. You're looking well... for someone twice your age. Any news on the aneurysm?

Terri: For your information, I have done nothing!
Glenn: That will be your epitaph, Terri.

Nicola: It's cause I'm the girl at the party no one wants to dance with. I'm the freak in the corner with a pint of cider and blackcurrant.
Glenn: We would still like to dance with you.
Nicola: Oh, fuck off and go and put your glasses back on. We all know you do that every time you walk in here.

Peter: The stupid one keeps staring at me.
Phil: That's because she's a mentalist and she loves you. If you ever crash your car in the mountains, she'll be the one waiting to pull you out! Have you seen Misery?
Peter: I'm at the fucking BBC, aren't I?

Nicola: You're about as on the ball today as a dead seal.
Malcolm: Hey, that's one of my fucking lines!

Terri: Okay, I'm going to take off my media hat.
Nicola: I honestly never thought you had one.


Back to The Thick of It