Alan Bates: Oliver

Quotes 

• Sgt. Ellis : Right. Missing person?

  Oliver : Yes.

  Sgt. Ellis : Name and address?

  Oliver : Mine or the missing persons?

  Sgt. Ellis : Well, let's start with the missing person's.

  Oliver : That's the hard one.

  Sgt. Ellis : In what way?

  Oliver : I don't know him by his real name.

  Sgt. Ellis : What name do you know him by then?

  Oliver : Aristotle, but that's a pseudonym.

  Sgt. Ellis : We prefer to call it an alias.

• Oliver : Accessing information? It's the same as remembering things, isn't it?

• Oliver : I'm an old trivia, quiz, and crossword buff. There's no cure.

• Oliver : In the great galaxy of education, it was the best of terms, it was the worst of terms. My travels began once upon a time in the Rhondda Valley. I got up, washed, showered and shaved, ate my bran, checked the crossword, and went to work. As it turned out, I might have been better advised to stay at home. It depends on how you feel about murder, corruption, and organized crime. I have always been against them. On the other hand, I have always been in favour of love. A tricky little conundrum, and very like life.

• [Mrs Moody offers her condolences that Oliver has been made redundant from the university] 

  Oliver : I expected it from the first moment.

  Mrs. Moody : You did?

  Oliver : A letter arrived from your husband inviting me to meet him at a sherry party. It was signed "T. H. MOODY".

  Mrs. Moody : Theodore Horatio. Family names, God help us.

  Oliver : But don't you see? It's an anagram of "THY DOOM". "Oliver," I said to myself, "Prepare to meet thy doom"... and I did.

• Oliver : I'm feeling the chill of middle age. I need the warmth of a good woman.

  Mrs. Moody : Bullshit.

  [she walks away] 

  Oliver : Also, I know something very funny about sex, and you'll never know what it is.

• Mrs. Moody : And what would this old trivial quiz and crossword buff like as a leaving present?

  Oliver : Well, in the best of all possible worlds, you.

  Mrs. Moody : Me?

  Oliver : When your husband introduced us at the sherry party, he said "This is my wife, Norma".

  Mrs. Moody : Not another anagram?

  Oliver : "Fire woman". You give off heat, Mrs Moody. Which is more, alas, than I can say for your husband.

  Mrs. Moody : I'm not on offer.

  Oliver : What *is* on offer?

  Mrs. Moody : A set of matching suitcases.

• Oliver : Imagine, once upon a time, typewriters were made in Great Britain.

  Mrs. Moody : Imagine typewriters.

• Oliver : I'll walk with you.

  Diane Priest : I don't need masculine protection.

  Oliver : Certainly not mine. I have the body of a weak and feeble man.

• Oliver : I tried to call you "Mrs Priest" and you said to me, "Diane, not Priest".

  Diane Priest : "Diane, not Priest".

  Oliver : Those words are a perfect anagram of "predestination".

  Diane Priest : What's predestination got to do with it?

  Oliver : As I understand it in simple terms, and without wishing to embarrass you, it means... we were sent on this Earth to be together.

  Diane Priest : Holy Mother of God.

• Oliver : You taught yourself computer technology?

  T. H. Moody : [nods]  Social and Economic History, that was my field. But when I saw what was happening in the real world...

  Oliver : Ah, yes, the real world.

  T. H. Moody : Survival of the fittest. Adapt or die. I realised that history was, er...

  Oliver : ...a thing of the past.

• T. H. Moody : Oh, you teach, er, Comparative Religion?

  Oliver : My chosen specialist subject. I originally planned to bowl off-spinners for England and play a cool jazz tenor saxophone, but somehow I drifted.