Dennis Skinner

I wouldn't take Father of the House even if I was offered it.

I don't believe in organised happiness.

I always work on the principle that if my heart and my head are together on an issue, write it, say it.

I do rely on my instincts a lot and my imagination.

You don't enter politics when you come to parliament. I was getting politics for breakfast, dinner and tea when I was a little kid.

If I'd not been a coal miner in the past, getting up very early, I wouldn't have been able to have done what I've been doing.

I am naturally disciplined. It started early; you can't be all free and easy in a family of 10.

There are only so many things you can do in life, and if you think I'm going to spend my waking hours thinking about some decency in some Tory or other, forget it.

I was cycling until I was 68. I used to play football, cricket, tennis, table tennis. I was into road walking - heel and toe.

I have worked out that I am living in London on £27 a day while David Cameron is claiming a damn sight more for his big house in Oxford.

I realised that you could get into trouble with a dull speech.

The personality cult of the ego does not work down a coal mine and it does not work in the Labour party.

I used to be very athletic when I was a young man.

I worked in the pit for more than 20 years and never had a serious injury.

I've never done any cross-party stuff. I've no interest in sitting down discussing pensions or whatever with Tories.

I've never bothered about what people say about me.

In the public sector, there are a million people in the health service. There ought to be a couple of dozen or more on the Labour side, who learned their trade in different parts of the health service, and the public sector, and local government. And bus drivers, and people on the Underground.

Environment does shape you. My environment, in a pit family, in a pit village, with nine kids in total.

I still think carefully about what I'm going to say. I use me heart and head technique, in which the heart says, 'get stuck in, Dennis!', and the head says, 'just a minute... ' But I probably don't use this as often as some others.

I often think now I'm a lot older, what would have happened if I was born in the middle of the city, where there was a drama class.

I've never sent an email to anybody. I believe in keeping the postman in work.

Parties are organised happiness but happiness is accidental. You can't legislate for it.

Cameron called me a dinosaur you know? Well I'm the only dinosaur who can ride a bike 12 miles a day.

I refused to pair with a Tory MP, I refused all foreign junkets and I've never had a drink in a Westminster bar.

When I swapped studying for a wage and a proper job, Mam and Dad were devastated. I was rejecting an opportunity they never had. But their eldest son, at 16, wanted only to follow his father down the pit. It was to be the biggest education of my life.

I don't think you should celebrate age.

I remember arguing with kids on the street who were talking about Santa Claus. I said don't be so daft - Santa Claus doesn't come down our chimney. He's an economic Santa Claus; he goes down chimneys where they've got money.

I didn't know when Parliament started to pay my wages.

We have all lost before and we will win again.

I have bought my flat myself and never charged a penny of it to the taxpayers.

I was elected by people voting Labour! The idea that you come to Parliament and the first thing you do is that you're hand in hand with Tories and Liberals - I can't understand it! I came here and I made my mind up that I wasn't going to collaborate with the people I'd fought against in the election. It wasn't a difficult thing.

I'm not gregarious. I spend a lot of time in the parks when it is fine. I do know almost every blade of grass.

I did marathons long before they were popular, when people running round the streets were looked at oddly.

We're allowed to say wonderful things about the Royal Family in the House of Commons. What you're not allowed to say is: anything that might be truthful, but that might upset them. So from time to time I've been pulled up because I've said things which I think are important.

When Cameron said to me 'you're a dinosaur,' several people in Parliament said to me 'you're trendin', Dennis, you're trendin' - and I didn't know what it meant. I know now what it is.

When posh boys are in trouble they sack their servants.

I never, ever romanticise life in the pit. It was a hard, dirty, noisy, tiring, dangerous job in a confined space, a very dark world with no toilets or running water to drink or wash with.

I was shaped by a pit environment and the Second World War. My playground was on the pit tip at Clay Cross and I grew up with that mining background. My father was a miner and my granddad was a miner, and I would say three out of ten on the street where I was born were working in the pits.

Isn't it essential in any prelude to a war to be sure of your allies and be sure of your objectives?

With this 'social media,' instead of letters you get emails. They're all written in a hurry, with no punctuation, no paragraphs - it's one continual stream, with spelling mistakes. Quite frankly I think it's a world I don't need. But I have to read them all because people say, 'Did you get my letter?' And it's not even a letter!

We dragged the National Health Service from the depths of degradation. I've got a United Nations heart bypass to prove it and it was done by a Syrian cardiologist, a Malaysian surgeon, a Dutch doctor and a Nigerian registrar.

I hate to say it because I voted against everything Thatcher did, but she had principles she believed in.

If I am doing a speech at a Labour party meeting - I think I have done every constituency - I'll look for a happy face, and talk to that face. In the Commons, with all the anger, I'll fix on a blank panel above their heads.

I'm not going to be putting my expenses on the Internet. I wouldn't know how.

To be honest, it was slavery. Nobody should have any romantic ideas about working underground. It's very, very dangerous. You always knew you were living in danger. You were on your hands and knees half the day.

I've never been to a dinner that's laid on anywhere. I don't want to waste what few hours I've got.

There are fads in life and old people indulge things to excess sometimes.

I remember at one time there were 44 mining MPs.

I'm up at the crack of dawn.

My life hasn't been all about politics.