The Office UK best quotes: 20 of the funniest jokes and one-liners from David Brent, Tim and Dawn

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The Office turns 20 years old today, and it's fair to say its impact on UK comedy is still being felt today

Created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the British sitcom started off as a dud with the critics, and a ratings flop.

But from rotten ratings on BBC Two, the show introduced the world to David Brent, a boss so unlikeable you couldn't help but laugh at his antics, and an office romance like no other between Tim and Dawn, to become a certified UK TV classic.

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Ricky Gervais as David Brent (BBC)Ricky Gervais as David Brent (BBC)
Ricky Gervais as David Brent (BBC)

To celebrate the hit series turning 20, here are 20 of the best quotes from Wernham Hogg to remind you just how cringeworthy David Brent was.

1 - Brent: “People see me, and they see the suit, and they go ‘you’re not fooling anyone’, they know I’m rock and roll through and through”

2 - Brent: “You will never work in a place like this again. It’s brilliant. Fact. And you’ll never have another boss like me, someone who’s basically a chilled-out entertainer."

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3 - Brent: "Pizza? Yeah? Never mind Pizza Express, what about beer express? Next stop, drunkenness! We can go anywhere you want."

4 - Brent: "I’m spent. I am now going to make like a banana and split! He got it."

5 - Brent: “If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain. Do you know which ‘philosopher’ said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she’s just a pair of tits.”

6 - Brent: “You see all these white middle-class fuddy duddies going, ‘Oh, we’ve got to find the new equivalent’. They’re looking in Oxford and Cambridge. No. Dr Dre, yeah. Ice T. They’re the equivalent of Wordsworth.”

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7 - Brent: “When people say to me: would you rather be thought of as a funny man or a great boss? My answer’s always the same, to me, they’re not mutually exclusive.”

8 - Brent: “How is Elaine, she left you yet? … She has left him, I forgot about that.”

9 - Brent: "My world does not end within these four walls, Slough's a big place. And when I've finished with Slough, there's Reading, Aldershot, Bracknell, you know I've got Didcot, Yateley. Winnersh, Taplow, you know. Because I am my own boss, I can - Burghfield - I can wake up one morning and go, "Oh, I don't feel like working today, can I just stay in bed?"

10 - Brent: "I'm an educator, I'm a motivator of people, I excite their imaginations. It's like bloody Dead Poet's Society sometimes out there."

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11 - Brent: "David can I stay in bed all day?" "Yes you can David." "..Both me, that's not me in bed with another bloke called David."

12 - David Brent: “Let's agree to disagree.”

Neil Godwin: “No. Let's agree that you agree with me.”

13 - Brent: “Money don't make my world go round, I'm reaching out to a higher ground”

Interviewee: “Is that a philosopher?”

Brent (nodding): “Des’ree”

14 - Neil Godwin: “What make’s your jacket?”

Brent: “Sergio Gergini.”

15 - Brent: “I don't live by ‘The Rules’ you know, and if there's one person who has influenced me in that way of thinking, someone who is a maverick, someone who does 'that' to the system, then it's Ian Botham.”

16 - Brent: “They're malleable, and you know that's what I like really, you know. I don't like people who come here: 'Ooh, we did it this way, we did it that way'. I just wanna go do it this way. If you like. If you don't... Team playing - I call it ‘team individuality’, it's a new, it's like a management style. Again guilty, unorthodox, sue me.”

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17 - Brent: “You just have to accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.”

18 - Brent: “Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous! No - purely social. I know someone who is an alchoholic and it is no laughing matter - particularly for his wife. And she's got alopecia. So... not a happy home life.”

19 - Dawn: “A real relationship isn't like a fairytale, if you think that for the next 40 years, every time you see each other you're going to glow, or, every time you hold hands there's going to be electricity, then, you're kidding yourself really. What about reliability, or er, someone paying the mortgage, or someone who's never been out of work. Those are the more important, practical things, you know. In reality.”

20 - Tim: “It's like an alarm clock's gone off, and I've just got to get away. I think it was John Lennon who said: ‘Life is what happens when you're making other plans.’, and that's how I feel. Although he also said: ‘I am the Walrus I am the eggman’ so I don't know what to believe.”

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