“

Alan Bennett was out in the street, attaching bicycle clips to his trousers.

‘Are you going to join us for spaghetti?’ I asked him.

‘Yes, do!’ said the boys.

‘Oh no,’ said Alan, in slightly shocked tones, as if we were inviting him to a naked orgy in a opium den. ‘I shall cycle home and have a poached egg.’ Alan Bennett is always excellent at being as much like Alan Bennett as you could reasonably hope. A keen mind, a powerful artistic sensibility, a fierce political and social conscience - but a man of bicycle clips and poached eggs. Is it any wonder that he is so loved?

” — The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography