BOB ELLIS: The capacity of the great stand-up comedians is that they can get a great deal of life into one joke, you know, one new thought in the world – every joke is a new thought in the world. And the great humorists and the thinkers have this in common – they bring new thoughts in the world and I'm somewhere between the philosopher and the stand-up comedian.

GEORGE NEGUS: I've described you already tonight as a 'true believer'. What is it that you believe in?

BOB ELLIS: We bleeding hearts believe that it's wrong to kill people, it's wrong to torture people, it's wrong to hurt children. That's all we believe. But once you put it like that, it's impossible to believe anything else.

GEORGE NEGUS: Yeah.

BOB ELLIS: And anyone who in journalism has experience, or who's travelled, winds up on the left. Uh, the right is a product of ignorance, or a kind of a sealed-off willed ignorance like that of the illiterate, alcoholic George Bush. It's not where civilised people go.