AA Gill and misogyny and homophobia....

My view of him is coloured by knowing my fair share of white men from various backgrounds who ended up being public school educated and going into middle-class professions and suffering quite badly from alcoholism. It is a type, and an exhausting one. The desperate need to provoke. The ability to be quite sentimental but also cruel and uncaring.

The thing is, all this 'did he mean Mary Beard is ugly or tv is a shallow world' isn't really getting to the nub of the matter, which is that good people don't say things like that at all, never mind in a public forum. So yeah, bright as you like, funny too, but also perhaps just a git.

Basically to me he just came across as an awful snob

Yes and as I am too I can recognise another.

I think the Britannia's Wife piece lacks any self -awareness. He is criticising Britannia's Wife for wanting to hold on to her idea of England and for being backward looking and insular whilst at the same time extolling a sort of Grand Tour / European Enlightenment view of Europe.

Being a snob myself I'm certainly not going to decry that sort of European culture. It's what I know and am at ease with. But if the concept of the EU and Europe is to be meaningful and relevant there must be more to it than just being able to understand the allegorical significance of a painting in an art gallery.

Basically to me he just came across as an awful snob. Sure sometimes he was quite witty in his put downs, but they were still mean spirited I (and any other man from my cultural background) am better than anyone else type pieces. The world isn't exactly short of people who like to put other people down or those with misogynistic views. Saying nasty things cleverly doesn't make them any more commendable.

Oh and why is his dyslexia used as a part of his excuse? We have lots of dyslexics in my family and none of them are nasty.

So pleased to see you, Lass!

I have expressed so many of my other issues with him that I didn't dare say "and another thing, As a writer, think he was nothing more than a glib competent hack who was in that he right place at that he right time...."

I come from a long line of hack writers-I know one when I see one!

I think the Britannia's mother in law piece is dreadful writing.

It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness

Oh superficially glib and clever but what is a "National Health Face" ? And do you see someone like her in every queue? I don't even recognise what he is describing.

It's also such a lazy trope - well worked by Evelyn Waugh- invent an Everyman or Everyman who is dimmer, less interesting, less patrician than you and sneer at them.

If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation

Yes, I get what he means I feel the same, but it's hardly a very inclusive idea of being European

"I reject everything about this woman because she does not look how I expect women to look"

I don't think that eve happens to men.

I think a lot of it is about how the dislike is expressed. Gill, for example, didn't have anything to say about Mary Beard's scholarship or political views or presenting style-he only focussed on her looks. And spcificLly, how her looks do not fit our society's ideal for a woman. I think that is misogyny.

See also Prince Philip.

AA Gill falls into that category of 'posh white men' who are permitted to be misogynistic/xenophobic/whatever because we're 'amused'. (See also Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg etc).

If he'd been working class/an ethnic minority (but just as intelligent and articulate) he'd have been entirely unknown.

thanks Jassy and Pacific!

Furry I'd tend to agree with you on Gill's motivation, but the thing is that those views are fairly widespread, they're just not usually expressed so explicitly (or in the context of such amusing writing, though not in themselves amusing).

I would MUCH prefer that they are put out there by intelligent, articulate people to be debated, to explain again why it's not right to think things like this, to remind ourselves about the depth and breadth of misogyny in society and, perhaps, to prompt us to think about why that misogyny might be so widespread and how we might need to change our approach if we want to eradicate it, than to have bland little 'common sense' remarks like 'oh, wouldn't we all just prefer to have a Man of the Year' that are so much harder to engage with.

I honestly don't think we'll ever be in a society where those views don't exist, in some form or another, and I'd rather have them in the open where I can see them, engage with them, refine my thinking and arguments, than hidden away because people don't dare to speak or because they don't intrude on my broadsheet-reading, BBC watching world view.

That's why I'll miss him. He made me think. That can NEVER be a bad thing.

I think one of the the most important things to consider is the fact that he suffered from alcoholism, an incredibly complex and devastating condition that will have eventually coloured all of his thoughts and social interactions - especially as it is a progressive illness. It's particularly relevant to his insecurity and neediness and the immaturity that led him to make remarks of the 'ugly' Mary Beard/anti-German nature.

The thing is, if, when reviewing Meet the Romans, Gill intended to challenge the double standard under which women presenting television programmes must be young, attractive and groomed, while men can quite easily be elderly and scruffy, wouldn't he have said so? As I recall, the piece said no such thing, it simply attacked Beard for being insufficiently attractive. It wasn't a piece of cultural commentary, it was a vile personal attack. There was no ulterior motive, he was simply being deeply unpleasant and horribly misogynistic.

I don't know whether this weirdo year has made me reflect more than I otherwise would, but it feels to me like it's good to have your viewpoint challenged by someone who can't be knocked down easily or put into a little box and then dismissed. It's good to see that clever, witty, articulate people can have views that are, in some places, quite different to mine (which are fairly smug middle class liberal wishy washy etc etc), while being very similar in others. I'm glad that his voice was out there and am saddened that there's nobody I can really see to replace it.

I didn't realise this was how I felt about it, but it is.

"no, he was IMO trying to point out how ludicrous it was to suggest Prof Beard was not suitable to present that program based on her looks"

I think that interpretation is so incredibly naive and generous that I wonder whether you would be interested in buying this big bridge over the Thames I happen to have for sale.........

Incidentally, it is not how Mary Beard herself took it.

Interesting thread OP. I loved his style and turn of phrase. He was clearly incredibly talented and extraordinarily bright. But just because someone is bright doesn't make them a nice person or even tolerant - the reasons why he was controversial are probably numerous but I suspect some of it was to do with the fact it sold newspapers. Also, if he was anything like my DH he may have enjoyed it.

The only person who can really answer these questions is his wide.

I have nothing of intellect to add the this discussion but (Welsh) DH would like me to say that he was right about the Welsh. And Rhyl.

I imagine AA Gill's adult children are fairly robust and appreciate that their father wasn't exactly St Francis of Assisi.

In the incredibly unlikely chance that they are reading this, though, there was rather a nice memory of Gill from a commenter under Esther wife-of-Giles' piece:

"In the early nineties I took a couple of patients for a drink at one of AA Gill’s well-known haunts and I saw him sitting there.. My dining companions had AIDS and it was obvious what they were suffering from if you knew what to look for. When we went to pay the bill, it had been settled. By him."