QUOTES of the year

‘Nothing in the history of disappointment compares to our seven-year-old daughter realising she’s the daughter of key workers.’ NHS doctor Mike Hunter after schools were closed in March due to the Covid crisis – except for the children of vital staff. ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud/ That floats on high, o’er vale and hill/ When all at once I saw a drone/ Controlled by Derbyshire’s Old Bill/ I spied no folk. I had no cough/ I did no harm that I could see/ Yet still it blared, “Hey you! Sod off!/ So much for England being free.’

Times reader Stephen Gold is inspired by Wordsworth in his condemnation of heavyhanded police tactics in April. ‘Dear Mr Wicks. Please may I be excused from PE this morning. It’s because I am 48 years old and I can’t walk after day three.’

Twitter user jokingly appeals to Joe Wicks, the locked-down nation’s PE instructor, in April.

‘People who menstruate. I’m sure there used to be a word for them. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’ J.K. Rowling remarks in June amid a row with trans activists.

‘We’re not society’s punchbags.’

Police Federation boss Ken Marsh after two officers were attacked in London in June. ‘Sir, there were several articles in Saturday’s Comment section with which I profoundly disagreed. Keep up the good work.’

Alan Hawkes, of Essex, writes to The Times in June support of free speech. ‘Gavin Williamson live on BBC Breakfast right now. Or, as he calls it, DDE Breakfast.’ TV presenter Richard Osman mocks the Education Secretary during August’s exams grade fiasco. ‘News channels… can we stop asking morons on the street what they think about things.’ Jeremy Clarkson urges broadcasters in September to stop the surge of vox pops.