Gene Hunt, the Detective Chief Inspector from Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes is, to put it bluntly, the best cop in the history of television. Yes, he’s better than Joe Friday. Better than Kojak. Better than Steve McGarrett. Better than Andy Sipowicz. Better than Columbo. Better than Tony Baretta. Better than the entire cast of The Wire. To paraphrase Lady Caroline Lamb, he’s mad, bad and dangerous to know. But he’s also really funny, too.
Here are bunch of his one-liners, starting with the first thing he ever said to Sam Tyler, the protagonist from Life On Mars:
Gene Hunt: They reckon you’ve got concussion – I couldn’t give a tart’s furry cup if ‘alf your brains are falling out. Don’t ever waltz into my kingdom acting king of the jungle.
Sam Tyler: Who the hell are you?
Gene Hunt: Gene Hunt. Your DCI. And it’s 1973. Almost dinner time. I’m ‘aving ‘oops.
“You are surrounded by armed bastards!”
“You great… soft… sissy… girlie… nancy… French… bender… Man United supporting POOF!”
“He’s got fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course.”
“I think she’s as fake as a tranny’s fanny.”
“She’s as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot.”
“Drugs, eh? What’s the point? They make you forget, make you talk funny, make you see things that aren’t there. My old grandma got all of that for free when she had a stroke.”
“What I call a dream involves Diana Dors and a bottle of chip oil! That’s what you call a guilty conscience, my friend.”
“Now. Yesterday’s shooting. The dealers are all so scared we’re more likely to get Helen Keller to talk. The Paki in a coma’s about as lively as Liberace’s dick when he’s looking at a naked woman… all in all this investigation’s going at the speed of a spastic in a magnet factory.”
“There will never be a woman prime minister as long as I have a hole in my arse.”
“I don’t like this. Gene Hunt smashes doors down. He does not pick dirty locks. I’m gonna be the laughingstock of the Lancashire Constabulary Dinner and Dance Meet.”
Sam Tyler: “I need a drink.”
Gene Hunt: “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since you got here.”
“Anything happens to this motor, I’ll come ’round your houses and stamp on all your toys. Got it? Good kids.”
Gene Hunt: “I’m not a Catholic me’self Mr Warren, but isn’t there something in the Bible about ‘Thou shalt not suck off rent boys’?”
Warren: “How dare you come in here!”
Gene Hunt: “You could have said that to the boy.”
[Gene and Sam need to get a pub landlord out of the way so that they can go undercover]
Gene Hunt: “Ray! Go and arrest the landlord of the Trafford Arms!”
Ray Carling: “What for?”
Gene Hunt: “Think of something on the way!”
[Later]
Gene Hunt: “In a bizarre twist of fate, the landlord was arrested this afternoon…. on suspicion of cattle rustling.”
[Ray takes a bow and receives a round of applause]
“Now is not the time to have a one night stand with your conscience.”
“You so much as belch out of line and I’ll have your scrotum on a barbed wire plate.”
Gene Hunt: “I think you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to.”
Sam Tyler: “An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding?”
Gene Hunt: “You make that sound like a bad thing.”
“I once punched a bloke for speaking French.”
Gene Hunt: “This is my city. And it will be a safe place for my wife and my mum to walk around in. Is that understood?”
Detectives: “Yes, guv.”
Gene Hunt: [Sternly] “Right. Find out who the dead woman was, find out who killed her. Do it now.”
[He checks his watch]
Gene Hunt: “Hold up, hold up. Do it tomorrow morning, first thing.[Brightly] Beer o’clock, gentlemen.”
Annie Cartwright: “Boss, there’s a viscous yellow liquid in his ear…”
Gene Hunt: “No, that’s the drip from my fried egg butty, love. Well done Miss Marple, that’s why we need women detectives…”
Chris Skelton: “I wonder what killed him?”
Gene Hunt: “That would be the bloody enormous hole in his chest where the bullet went in!”
“I’ve come at this from more angles than Linda Lovelace.”
“You’re not the one who is going to have to knit himself a new arsehole after 25 years of aggressive male love in prison”
[After being shot in the chest and saved by the bullet hitting his whiskey flask]
Sam Tyler: “What are the odds?”
[Hunt pulls out 5 flasks from various pockets]
Gene Hunt: “Pretty good actually.”
“It doesn’t take a degree in applied bollocks to know whats going on!”
“A criminal farts in this city and our snouts should be able to name the arse responsible!”
“If I worried as much as you, I wouldn’t fart through fear of shitting meself!”
“Your son, Mrs Bathurst, was a cold-hearted killer. And if there is a hell, he’s going there to be poked up the arse with sharp fiery sticks, forever and ever, Amen!”
Sam Tyler: “If it was to do with football, he’d have serious injuries”
Gene Hunt: “He’s dead. That’s quite serious.”
Sam Tyler: “I still think we need to entertain the possibility that this could be a racial killing.”
Gene Hunt: “Oh well, let’s entertain it, let’s take it out for a prawn cocktail, a steak and a bottle of Liebfraumilch, then kick it into the gutter where it belongs!”
“One second. Two seconds. Go on, then… try me. You know, I’ve had harder shites than you, Friday nights, after a curry. And when I’m done, I don’t sit and ruminate about the individual’s role in society, my son. I flush ‘em away.”
Ryan Burns: “I am the vine! You are the branches! John, Chapter 15, Verse 5!”
Gene Hunt: “You’re nicked for the murder of Delphine Parks, the rape and attempted murder of Nina Akiboa. Anything you say will be taken down, ripped up and shoved down your scrawny little throat until you’re choked to death. Gene Hunt, Chapter 1, Verse 2.”
“All right then Debbie, I’m a police officer and I’m going to give you a bit of advice. You never, ever do what scumbags like him tell you to… understood? Life is too precious – keep it that way. Right… piss off back to Liverpool and have a lovely life stealing hubcaps and being over sentimental, OK?”
Alex Drake: “I’m 90% certain he was on something…”
Gene Hunt: “Only 90%? How frightfully modest! The whole camp looks cheery this mornin’… is there a musical called ‘Paint Your Wagon Shit-Colored’?”
Doctor: “He’s dead!”
Gene Hunt: “So… five years of medical school paid off, then?”
“Excuse my colleague… education of a toff, manners of a sewer rat.”
“Take that seatbelt off! You’re a police officer, not a bloody vicar.”
“Right! How many birds does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two! One to run around screaming ‘What do I do?’ and one to shag the electrician!”
“Oh dear Lord, if this is a test, I fear I may fail. And I thought it would be the booze or the fags but oh no! I’m gonna die in an underground vault, in the company of a posh, mouthy tart with a head full of brains and the common sense of a grain weevil.”
Alex Drake: “The mind’s an amazing organ…”
Gene Hunt: “I’ve got an amazing organ.”
Alex Drake: “…capable of much more than you could imagine.”
Gene Hunt: “Right again.”
“I am not going to die in a trattoria!”
“Kebab? Looks like a pasty with its arse hanging out!
“Fire up the Quattro!”
“You’ve been Quattroed!”
Gene Hunt: “Yeah, and time’s running out for moi.”
Alex Drake: [surprised] “That’s French.”
Gene Hunt: “Sorry, I’m under pressure.”
One of my favorite Hunt\Drake exchanges:
Gene Hunt: “There is no conspiracy. Contrary to what commie nutters believe and what you’ve seem to have forgotten is that this is the home of bloody democracy, Land of Hope and Glory, Rule Britannia, roast beef and Yorkshire pud and a square deal for all. If the government are keeping secrets, it’s probably for our own bloody good.”
Alex Drake: “You are so naive.”
Gene Hunt: “And you are really pissing me off. The British government does not go around throwing people off the tops of buildings…”
Alex Drake: “Kennedy worked part time at a top secret weapons research center, joined a left-wing group… suddenly he’s murdered and his body goes missing…”
Gene Hunt: “Spies do not wear camo and keep girlie mags under their beds. They’re too busy sipping claret and touching each other’s posh todges. You probably know some of them. This is amurder inquiry.”
Alex Drake: “One that could already be compromised. They could be watching us right now!”
Gene Hunt: “And when they come, they’ll be wearing white coats and carrying a straightjacket and it won’t be my bloody size!”
And lastly, not a “funny” quote, but a kick-ass one:
“Once upon a time, in this room, a man drew a line. He said that police corruption was going to become a thing of the past. Well, that man was a liar and that man is now dead. I’m going to redraw that line. I am not a liar. We are police officers and we will behave like police officers. We will fight, slap, knock down, beat up and intimidate to hold back the wave of scum. That is our right, and that is our duty. But if I find one man feathering his own nest by so much as one bent penny, I will destroy him. Any questions?”
Thanks to Marc Shea