It has all helped to keep me busy and out of the public houses

I grew up in a household where my father's appreciation of P.G. Wodehouse was ever present - the serried ranks of paperbacks and then later of a vintage collection of original Wodehouse books.

On the Penguin paperbacks of those distant decades, there was always a blurb from Evelyn Waugh, from a 1961 radio broadcast.

Mr Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.

And he did. Some ninety-six books in his lifetime along with numerous librettos, theatrical scripts and other productions.

As a child, his language and sly humor drew me in and I have read Wodehouse all my life, happily repeating stories which indeed never stale.

And Waugh's promise holds. We are safer, more prosperous and have greater access to everything from health to culture than we did at any time in Wodehouse's life but it is easy to construct an argument that perhaps our existence is more irksome. It sure feels like it at times. The more distant real catastrophes like nuclear war and agricultural collapse become, the more we have to deal with minimally talented off-spring of the well-off eager to lead a life of Kabuki theater, preening and strutting their moral stature. I think that constitutes irksome to a degree not quite foreseen in 1961.

Anyway - a running series of P.G. Wodehouse quotes and passages to relieve the tedium of the mainstream media news.

From In His Own Words by Barry Day and Tony Ring.

I don't have a set of rules guiding me. I just go on living. You don't notice things when you're writing. Just writing one book after another, that's my life ... I wrote another book, then I wrote another book, then I wrote another book, and continued to do so down the years ... But there has never been anything dramatic and sensational about any of my productions. I have always run a quiet, conservative business, just jogging along and endeavouring to give satisfaction [by maintaining quality of output] ... I would call myself a betwixt-and-between author - not on the one hand a total bust and yet not on the other a wham or socko. Ask the first ten men you meet, 'Have you ever heard of P. G. Wodehouse?' and nine of them will answer, 'No.' The tenth, being hard of hearing, will say, 'Down the passage, first door on the right.'

I am a creature of habit and as a result of forty years of incessant literary composition have become a mere writing machine. Wherever I am, I sit down and write ... It has all helped to keep me busy and out of the public houses.