On Saturdays, I permit myself a small insult as reward for all the hard work during the week. Here’s today’s juicy snippet.

A U.S Congressman is reported to have said of another :

“Like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight, he shines and stinks.”

Thanks to Matthew Parris in today’s Times (London) for that great one-liner.

The question then arises, who does that remind you of over here in Britain? Answers on a postcard, please, to : 10 Downing Street, London, SW1.

Well, it’s Saturday. I’m not Fatblogging. Be grateful.

Great one-liners have a couple of features in common : they are exquisitely wrought by the writer, and they inevitably contain a touch of the bizarre.

However, if you overdo the bizarre, they can die a Glasgow Empire death. Take this one by Peter Kay, which, incredibly, was recently voted the best one-liner in television comedy history :

“Garlic bread. It’s the future. I know. I’ve tasted it.”

Now that makes you wonder if intelligent life has finally abandoned the planet.

Chandler in Friends was always a source of terrific one-liners and is sorely missed. Fresh material is increasingly hard to come by these days.

All is not lost, though. The BBC, purveyor of the worst comedies in television history, especially on BBC2, has risen to the post-Chandler challenge and produced the finest source of great one-liners in television history the current dismal climate.

The show is called Life on Mars and it’s a police series set in 1973, seen through the eyes of a 21st century cop — don’t ask, but time travel is involved.

Star of the show is DCI Hunt, played with total relish by Phillip Glenister (pictured, right). Hunt is not politically correct. His motto is, “The first one who speaks is guilty.”

So here’s the one-liner of the week, from DCI Hunt :

“He’s as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot.”

Wonderful.