Why does Stanley Johnson even want a knighthood? ... Scan his CV and y — Camilla Long

"Im quite relieved that Nigel Farage MEP has only one testicle. When the former leader of the UK Independence party (UKIP) had the other removed in 1987 because of cancer, the doctors offered him an artificial replacement to give him "greater social confidence". But to watch him screaming at Herman Van Rompuy as he did last month, saying the European council president had the "charisma of a damp rag", tearing around with a loudhailer on his campaign to oust John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, from his Buckingham seat, working "100-hour weeks", inhaling whole packs of Rothmans and choffing down hundreds and hundreds of pints, I dread to think what he would be like with ... two."

"Perhaps the nastiest attack is reserved for someone outside the family: a description of a one-legged landlady who fails to provide Cusk with hot and cold running lattes on a riding holiday in Devon."

"Actually, Im feeling a little exhausted by the constant badinage — chatting with [[Piers Morgan|[Piers] Morgan]] is like endlessly throwing a stick for a demented borzoi, back and forth, back and forth, to the extent that after one particularly long and tiring session, I finally call him a tosser. He is thrilled: "Ha, ha, she cracks!" he says."

"Personally, I like his playful recklessness and feel quite certain that he would willingly show me his penis, given slightly different circumstances and a bucket of champagne. Stupid me for not asking — he admits, "I like getting naked"."

"She rips into her latest meat with all the poison and vigour of her earliest memoir, A Lifes Work, an excoriating account of pregnancy and motherhood she wrote in 2001. She was flamed then by the critics for her self-absorption and fearlessness — and theres plenty to get the blood circulating in this book, too."

"Why cant women just love having babies? Is it too laughable, parochial, bourgeois not to obsess over your career? If there is one thing I wish had been different at my hard, driven, academic school, its that no one, not a single teacher, said to me: "Look, by the way, theres this thing that might happen in the middle of your life and its going to be amazing. Make space for it, because it’s going to be a lot, lot better than getting 87 per cent in Latin." But no one ever did."