QUOTES of the week

‘Sometimes it seemed like that recurring bad dream when you are telling your feet to run and your feet won’t move.’ Boris Johnson in a perceived attack on Public Health England’s sluggish response to the coronavirus crisis.

‘If God had wanted Yorkshire and Lancashire to meet, he would not have put a huge lump of granite between us.’ Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke argues against redrawing constituencies across county borders.

‘Two silk worms had a race. They ended in a tie.’ Hollywood veteran Carl Reiner was still cracking gags on Twitter shortly before his death last week aged 98.

‘Genetics can only get you so far.’ Supermodel

Elle Macpherson admits she has tried various diets and workoiuts to maintain her figure.

‘I’m going on a diet – the 5:2 – only with people rather than food.’ TV chef Nigella Lawson prefers solitude most of the time to going out with friends.

‘I remember people saying, “You shouldn’t have ideas above your station.” You bloody well should!’ Bake Off star Prue Leith, who thinks Britain is ‘unbelievably class-ridden’.

‘The principle we work by, policing by consent, is not about pandering to some new public opinion.’

Scotland Yard boss Dame Cressida Dick defends her officers’ use of stop-and-search powers just weeks after many ‘took the knee’ during Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

‘If they were going to kill each other, they’d have done it by now.’ TV star Richard Madeley’s response in a newspaper column after a reader expressed concern about her rowing neighbours. He later apologised.