Stephen Fry

And if a member of the royal family should decide to get married or Winston Churchill died or some Americans decided to skip around on the surface of the moon, then it would be taken out and looked at because something important should be seen.

But my father did not approve of his children sitting around watching it during the day or night even.

Always more things to be done.

But anyway, he was away, over the way, as we used to say.

He used to work in his laboratory.

He was a scientist.

So it was a rainy Sunday.

I turned on the television and it's snowy black and white was a film that I couldn't quite work out what it was.

I could tell it wasn't Shakespeare, but at the same time, it clearly wasn't contemporary.

And people were speaking in the most remarkable way.

And you know how it is with a film.

When it's good, you sort of remember every single part of it.

When it's bad, the whole thing flies from your memory.

So these scenes were burned into my memory, and even the phrases.

There's a young man who says to a beautiful young woman, I hope I won't offend you if I state quite openly and frankly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.

LAUGHTER

And I thought, I never heard it.

I knew it was funny because, of course, there's an inbuilt irony that you don't have to consciously be aware of, which is that a declaration of love should be in Saxon language.

I love you.

Not, you are the visible personification of absolute perfection.