THE MAN IN HIS OWN WORDS

On his attempt to be the mayor of London: "If you are only going to have a saint for this job, I'm certainly not your man."

On women: "I adore them, and they know I appreciate them. I admire women - they're so reliable."

On his career: "I had to work hard. I didn't have the talent not to."

On his political ambition: "I didn't enter Parliament with the idea of spending 35 years on the back benches."

On his appointment as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party: "The best unpaid job in England."

On the Monica Coghlan case: "I am innocent of this charge, and no matter what you say, now matter how clever your wording of out-of-context questions, there is only one thing that matters in this court of law - and that is that I have never met this girl and I have never had sexual intercourse with this girl and that is the truth."

On The News of the World then: "They were quite happy to ruin my career. They were behaving very dishonourably."

On his brush with bankruptcy in 1974: "The downfall showed me that I wasn't a god; I was a normal mortal, well able to make a bloody fool of myself, which I did."