Jeremy Hardy Speaks Volumes: Words, Wit, Wisdom, One-Liners and Rants

by Jeremy Hardy

Even when he was gravely ill towards the end of 2018 he insisted on listing for me all the things that would be rubbish about his memorial and the various people from his past that it would annoy him to see there.

I remember him saying to me once that our job, as comedians, was to never lose sight of our own ridiculousness. He never did.

Or, as Jeremy said, ‘For thousands of years the rallying cry of the Left has been, “I thought you were bringing the leaflets”.’

I had an imaginary nodding acquaintance. Mum would sometimes lay an extra place for him at dinner time and I’d say, ‘Well – I don’t really know Colin that well, Mum.’

My mum had drawers full of used wrapping paper with the Sellotape picked off. In the fridge, she’d keep a single roast potato, housed in a yoghurt carton sealed with cling film – because you never know.

In terms of social class, if you want to be in a particular one, your best bet is to grow up in it, because we are not a socially mobile country.

I’m also envious of my friends who went to Cambridge, especially the ones from working-class backgrounds because they get to be privileged and bitter. How cool would that be?

I become fantastically RP and say fewer all the time, even when it’s wrong. ‘Are you going to the Henry Moore exhibition?’ ‘I think you mean the Henry Fewer exhibition.’

Feelings are involuntary. Human beings have all kinds of weird feelings. Morals come into play when we decide whether or not to indulge those feelings.

I’ve always been very unlucky in love; when I was twenty-one I caught a Platonically Transmitted Disease. Got glandular fever from sucking somebody else’s security blanket.

The children would take it in turns to get stung by wasps, be carsick and wet themselves but Father would refuse to stop until he reached the picnic site, a lay-by on a new stretch of dual carriageway. The picnic was eaten in the car to avoid the litter bin full of angry hornets but the children were allowed out of the car to collect something for the school nature table.

‘Equal but different’ has never been a happy prescription. No society that is serious about equality promotes segregation.

Human beings are fundamentally incompetent. It’s only our motivation that varies.

But should we blame a flag because it’s flown over some terrible things in the past? I’ve flown over Swindon but I can’t be blamed for that.

What use is a one-day strike? How can you have a class struggle on flexitime?

If there’s one thing that unites this land it’s our indefatigable and chipper resignation about the absolute shitness of life. And I’m proud to say that.

I’d ask you, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ and most of you would say, ‘Well you know eventually you reach a stage in life where you make peace with the fact that none of your plans really came to fruition. And then you throw yourself into parenthood for a long time and you don’t really address any of your own issues. And then your kids are off your hands, but then your own parents become a worry and then there you go and you’re next in line. Yay!’

If a lone woman is attacked somewhere, police advise all women to stay indoors for the rest of their lives. And yet, if there’s a whole spate of bombings in the run-up to Christmas and hundreds of people are being injured, police urge everyone to go about their business as normal.

What if we become a republic or we’re sold to America as Walt Disney’s Cockney World of Adventures?

But basically, the Automatic Kalashnikov is a very straightforward, low-cost assault weapon. It’s like The One Show: lightweight, unsophisticated but undeniably popular, and a quick way of getting publicity.

All racists should be hospitalised. I say this not just on principle but because it is very hard to maintain racial prejudice while being cared for by the National Health Service.

‘It’s no use trying to be clever. We are all clever here. Just try to be kind.’

I think I preferred the days when you had to fill the bath if anything was going to be done to the house.

‘How you doin’, darling?’, and you’d say, ‘Fine, how are you?’, expecting a corporate script, but she’d say, ‘I’m fine because the Lord Jesus is in me life.’ And that was great, that was who she was.

The Nike swoosh turns kids into fashion slaves, although some earn enough to send a little bit home to their parents. And Gap is like Tate Modern, because you look around you thinking, ‘A child could have done that.’

Some people can’t be alone for a day without seeking out someone to talk to: ‘I don’t really like my own company.’ Well, why would you subject anyone else to it, then?

Because regret is one of our least favourite feelings, men especially turn it into belligerence, so we become the wronged party: ‘Oh, blame me for my actions, why don’t you? I wouldn’t have run over your foot if I hadn’t been driving to Smiths to buy you a birthday card.’

Most people don’t lie for terrible reasons but just because they haven’t got the confidence to communicate without showing off.

I have an intolerance, an intolerance of people with spurious allergies.

a single sprout could contain about two gallons of water so their main function on Christmas Day was to rehydrate old people

It can be dispiriting when they speak of prayer, but no more so than when a person says, ‘What sign are you?’ or ‘I’ve got this crystal …’

Kate isn’t the most positive representation of a woman’s role in a relationship, but bear in mind it was written four hundred years ago and more importantly, Shakespeare was from the West Midlands.

For me, Jeremy, wasn’t quite a comedian with

a political edge. Rather, he was a political activist who was also an absolutely peerless and professional stand-up – as in, his humour was political, but the joke always came first.

Jeremy used to joke that he had been a supporter of the Labour party all his life, with a brief hiatus between 1983 and 2015.

‘Well. How do we live life to the full? At the age of forty-three, I have decided to live each day as though it were my last, so I lie in bed all day, slipping in and out of consciousness.’

As I’ve said, I don’t like the generation gap; that’s why I want it bridged with deference and wonder.

You sacrificed your youthful radicalism so that they don’t have to.

realistically, what will make you happier: ticking off the hundred best locations for ‘wild swimming’ – which is what we used to call ‘swimming’ in the days before someone apparently invented it – or just spreading a little joy?

Young people are afraid of the old, and so they stereotype the old as being xenophobic and homophobic and generally phobic, when it’s really they – the young people – who are afraid of the old.

‘Oh, words cannot express’ – if we haven’t got the words we’re screwed aren’t we? What else have we got but words? Semaphore, contemporary dance.

… I mean, marriage is like the witness protection scheme: you’re living in the suburbs somewhere you don’t want to be, wearing clothes you don’t like, you’re not allowed to see anyone you know ever again.