Francis Fulford: Self

Quotes 

• [Francis has bought a metal detector for £99] 

  Francis Fulford : You would have thought, logically, as there's been a house on this site for... at least a thousand bloody years, that some idiot must have dropped a gold coin about somewhere and I want it.

  [he walks down along the gravel beside the house and soon enough the metal detector beeps. He gets his young son Humphrey to dig at that spot] 

  Francis Fulford : Dig, dig, Humph, with a vengeance!

  [they find the object just under the surface of the gravel] 

  Francis Fulford : It's a 1 pence coin. Hooray! Your first treasure hunt. We've got another 9,999 of these to find before we get payback.

• Francis Fulford : You need children in a house. Especially a house like this, you need children. They bring it alive, they make it fun and they enjoy it. And I'll tell you what, they aren't a bunch of poofs. If all your children end up as queers that's the end of the family isn't it?

  [he laughs] 

  Francis Fulford : I mean, you've got to breed! I've got nothing against queers, but that doesn't mean to say you want them in your family. You don't want to breed them because you won't breed from them, like breeding a mule.

• [Francis breaks up a fight between his daughter and one of his sons] 

  Francis Fulford : Why were you attacking him?

  Mathilda Fulford : Because he pushed me over.

  Francis Fulford : Oh, I see, that's fair enough.

• Francis Fulford : I think it brings a happier house and a happier family life if your children can appreciate and understand and agree with most of one's own prejudices. I remember Arthur at 4 years old, he'd been taken out by a friend from school and they'd gone to Exeter. We were chatting about it, I said "How'd you get on in Exeter?" He said "Well, Daddy, there were Germans in the pizza bar" "Germans? God, Arthur, how awful" He said "Yes, it was, Daddy. But there was some good news too" I said "What was that, Arthur?" "One of them was disabled"

  [he laughs loudly] 

  Francis Fulford : Oh, it was a cracker! I thought "That's m'boy!"

• Francis Fulford : [showing some paintings to people on a guided tour of the house]  There is Thomas Fulford, who was killed at the Siege of Exeter. But it was painted some time after his death. And there's his wife weeping on his grave in the bottom right hand corner. Naked. I wonder if my wife will weep naked on my grave. One doubts it somehow, but there we are.

• Francis Fulford : [to one of his children]  Oh, Humphrey, do stop being a bore. You're being a fucking nuisance, now fuck off.

• Francis Fulford : Freud said men think about sex every five minutes. I always say, well, landowners think about money every five minutes.

• Francis Fulford : You read about all these Scottish gits up in Scotland with their clan associations, and the Frasers and the McDougals and the McFuckups and all these people... you know how they all don the kilts and "Get m' sporran going" and off they go to America where their so-called kinsmen flood around, they get the chequebooks out and write large dollops of dollars to keep the family castle or whatever going in Scotland and a great time is had by all. And it seems we rather missed a trick in England. The English, we're rather too diffident, we don't go out and sort of boast of our antecedents and make a big fuss about sort of recruiting all the American Fulfords, or the Australian Fulfords, or finding out if one of these bastards has actually made shedloads of money. We still have this myth in the back of our brains that all Americans are rich. In fact all of them aren't rich, a lot of them are poor. But this myth... And you think, hey, I should show them around, you never know your luck... and they might feel so sorry that they get the chequebook out. I have to say they never have. Been rather a disappointment. But I think one has to persevere. I remember once the doorbell rang at about 7 o'clock at night and this guy reckoned he was some relation of mine from America and said he lived on Fifth Avenue, and I got awfully excited. But Kishanda thought he had AIDS and wasn't nearly so excited as I was. I said, that's an extra reason to be excited, it means he's going to die soon!

  [he laughs] 

  Francis Fulford : So if we're nice to him he might remember us in his will. But I think he probably is dead now and he certainly didn't remember us in his will, so that was a bit of a wasted time. And Kishinda threw away the glass which he'd been drinking out of and any of the plates he had touched, in case we contracted AIDS.

• Francis Fulford : I've always thought that when I die I'll try and come back as a ghost to help the finances, because if you give dinner parties where a ghost would actually clear away the food, the price would be no object to various people. The finances would be solved at once.

• Francis Fulford : [talking about the events and activities the house is used for]  Spooks one day, and the management training for one of Britain's major PLCs the week following. And I have to say a bigger bunch of wankers I've never met.

• Francis Fulford : People always ask me when they look round the house "Oh, why don't you apply for a grant?" I never really envisaged ever asking for a grant from the taxpayer to help maintain this house. And nor do most of the people who have houses like this. As a private owner I make all the decisions. If I want to paint the whole bloody thing bright orange with yellow spots, I bloody well can. You know, we've all learnt our lesson, which is basically that, on the whole, all the people who are part of English Heritage and the like are a load of wankers. I don't quite see why people think it's part of English heritage when all that people have tried to do is either tax it into the ground, or, back in the civil war, try to batter it into the ground with bloody cannons. Well, that means it fucking ain't their heritage, it's my heritage.

• Francis Fulford : [showing the film crew a portrait of Spencer Perceval]  Brother, I think, of my great-great-great-great grandmother, who was the only Prime Minister to be assassinated. You would think it would be a more popular hobby than that.

• Francis Fulford : [after mentioning some of his ancestors who were careless with money]  The only way to keep an estate like this together is not to take your eye off the ball, to be careful, not to gamble. That's why we've held our land and our house for 800 years. Not, that is, that we haven't had the odd complete cretin, but luckily we haven't two in a row. I mean, the old rule of thumb is a family and an estate can survive one idiot, but can't survive two.

• Francis Fulford : A South African businessman of my acquaintance once said to me... he learnt across the desk with a, sort of, evil - he was an evil bastard - evil gleam in his eye... he said "Frank, do you know what I've got?" I said "No. What have you got?" He said "I've got Fuck You money." And I thought then, and I think now, that there is no better definition of what I mean by real money than "Fuck You money". You don't owe any bastard anything, and you don't want anything, so you've got Fuck You money. I, unfortunately, owe quite a few bastards a lot of money, and I also want quite a lot of stuff. So I am a long way away from having Fuck You money, in fact if I had Fuck You money you wouldn't be here now.

• Francis Fulford : If you believe in an afterlife or a life after death, which I think I rather do, in fact I bloody well do, death is the biggest adventure, isn't it? The greatest adventure of your life is to die. If one really thinks of going up a big ladder and meeting your once father, mother, and ancestors, grandparents and way back... I don't want to be the guy who screwed up, or the guy who has to say, you know, sorry it's all gone. You know, there's Mr Smith of Goldman Sachs living there now, or some other ghastly character, you know? I don't want to be the guy... No... Yeah, it'd be a bit more worrying dying if I thought I'd have to tell Dad and the rest of the crew that little message.