Famous Words

"I have always found strangers sexy." - Hugh Grant, six months before he was arrested with stranger Divine Brown.


"I would not wish to be Prime Minister, dear." - Margaret Thatcher in 1973.


"That rainbow song's no good. Take it out." - MGM memo after first showing of The Wizard Of Oz.


"You'd better learn secretarial skills or else get married." - Modelling agency, rejecting Marilyn Monroe in 1944.


"Radio has no future." "X-rays are clearly a hoax". "The aeroplane is scientifically impossible." - Royal Society president Lord Kelvin, 1897-9.


"You ought to go back to driving a truck." - Concert manager, firing Elvis Presley in 1954.


"Forget it. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel." - MGM executive, advising against investing in Gone With The Wind.


"Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little." - A film company's verdict on Fred Astaire's 1928 screen test.


"Very interesting, Whittle, my boy, but it will never work." - Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cambridge, shown Frank Whittle's plan for the jet engine.


"There will be one million cases of AIDS in Britain by 1991." - World Health Organisation in a 1989 report. It over-estimated by 992,301 cases.


"The Beatles? They're on the wane." - The Duke of Edinburgh in Canada, 1965. They went on to produce a string of No 1s.


"The atom bomb will never go off - and I speak as an expert in explosives." - U.S. Admiral William Leahy in 1945.


"All saved from Titanic after collision." - New York Evening Sun, April 15 1912.


"Brain work will cause women to go bald." - Berlin professor, 1914.


"Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine." - Radio Times editor Rex Lambert, 1936.


"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - director of the US Patent Office, 1899.


"And for the tourist who really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam." - Newsweek magazine, predicting popular holidays for the late 1960s.