Dics of fun quots

A few years back I had an argument with Ned Sherrin (now, but not then, a friend), which I have to say he won. Reviewing the first edition of his Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations — now reissued in a third edition — I complained that there were too many old chestnuts in it.

Varying the metaphor, I wrote, ‘As a child, I would politely decline the gobstopper that three other kids had already sucked.’ Ned rightly retorted that it is precisely for familiar quotations, half-forgotten, that people often turn to dics of quots. (‘To be or …’ — how does it go?). I had a more serious reservation about the book. As his recent autobiography shows, Sherrin is himself a fountain of wit, with few living rivals — among them, Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Alan Bennett, Stephen Fry, possibly Clive James. But I felt the Humorous Quotations anthology was too lazily compiled.