Giles Coren on Weinstein and what a terrible shame it is that women have to power to ruin a sex pest's career

That 2008 email to his editors

I agree with a PP about he wants to be the male Katie Hopkins. Except KH doesn’t have 2 BBC programmes and is an outward joke. He seems to think he needs to be respected.

Of to the BBC website I go to complain,::

Winchester you've just crystallised my thoughts precisely. I just find it so abhorrent that abuse and harassment is deemed to be acceptable if the perpetrator is good looking.

And I think that the part that depresses me the most is that this view is so widespread.

I think this whole 'it's would be okay if he were physically attractive thing' stems from their failure to recognise women as humans, and not walking sex dolls.
They're seeing it from their pov which is they'd welcome a come on if she were young and firm, but not if old and wrinkly.
Whereas for most mature and decent humans, physical attractiveness is deeply intertwined with attraction to the actual human underneath.

I’m a bit confused about the first paragraph. Who ends a work email with xxx ? That’s just weird and unprofessional.
Would he do that if the sender was a man?
The ‘just touching’ bit is unbelievable. Did an editor read this through and think it was fine as well? So grim.

I've been thinking about this thread since last night. I don't usually post in feminism (basically because my BP would be permanently off the scale) but I feel so angry about it that I had to.

I am so sick of the focus on looks. The Last Leg did it with HW a week ago, suggesting that if he was better looking that somehow it would be more acceptable for him to be an abusive wankbadger.

And now GC says that, now that he's older and less attractive, that it's time to stop being a creepy fuckwit.

I am so sick of this attitude. I've experienced problems with old men, middle aged, young. But d'ya know what? It doesn't fucking matter what they look like. Abuse is never ok. It doesn't matter if they look like a Greek God or Jabba the Hutt - it's wrong. And I'm fucking sick of the attitude that, men who are old and fat and ugly = wrong, men who are young and fit and beautiful = acceptable.

Sorry for the rant, I just needed to let that out

God, that letter is just shameful. He has no awareness about himself.

A quick "In future, can you send me the final copy so that I can check it before publication? Thank you" would have sufficed if he truly doesn't want his self-indulgent claptrap renaissance fresco being messed with.

He is like a Kentish Town David Brent.

I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable.

Actual lol.

Jesus wept Roly that subbing complaint. It's absolutely delusional. Giles Coren seems to have confused himself with some kind of grand literary figure of journalism.
Everyone must have fallen about in the office when that arrived.

Oh my god yes I forgot! That was 1000 levels of cringe.

At least he was cringing too. Too right.

He's also pretty normal on his Instagram Stories. Nothing provocative or offensive other than a bit of sarky grumpiness about other annoying guests in the hotel (he's filming that hotels thing with Monica Galetti at the moment)

Apart from when he went to that trendy restaurant and made insta story after insta story about someone being on their laptop in there, calling them a cunt, showing all his followers, until THEN it turned out the person was the head chef/owner of the place and he began completely sucking up to him.

Obnoxious and mortifying.**

Coco, I wonder if that’s the restaurant we saw him in years ago? He was an absolute prat and left a shocking mess that he expected the staff to clean up. We were appalled.

heyroly nice bit of racist nastiness in that piece comparing the sub's work to "a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco", fuck's sake.

The big problem with the piece is, quite simply, he makes it all about him. Not about the women who have been raped, abused or molested, or who live their lives in fear of those things, but about how it all affects him. Because that’s the thing that matters here, right?

This is the blog post I'd remembered, where she talks about their epic rows where he calls her boring and fat:

reciperifle.blogspot.ie/2012/12/onion-and-gruyere-tartquiche.html?m=1

ifnot yep

I don't know what he's like to work with but to wait on he was consistently a rude, arrogant fucker who thought he was the dogs bollocks.

He was a regular at a restaurant I work in about 8-10 years ago. Never anything more lecherous than most of the male clientele (which isn't saying much) but just a stuck up twat who thought he was it.

Not surprise to read this article at all.

One largely run by men?

Jesus, what kind of world do we live in when a man is able to earn a living writing that creepy as fuck, self indulgent shite?

There's a long literary tradition of boring middle aged men writing about their nastiest behaviour and darkest perversions in a sort of faux self hating way. It's a very hackneyed type of writing.
Thing is, it rarely IS self hating. It's a way of going "look-I do this. I think this. But it's out in the open now, and the world keeps turning and hey I'm really not so bad. I'm just like every other guy."
I know a few men like this. One of them is actually blisteringly funny. I could see him writing an article about his porn habit that would have you crying tears of laughter, but most of them just want to "shock" by brain dumping the cesspit of their mind onto others and by doing so tacitly seeking approval. For other men to say "me too" (which I'm sure they do).
It's the ultimate in arrogance. And it's over, surely?? It's 2017 ffs.

He also has TWO shows on the BBC. Now it has to be said he's not particularly objectionable on TV. He's not hired by them to be a provocateur so he keeps it clean. He's also pretty normal on his Instagram Stories. Nothing provocative or offensive other than a bit of sarky grumpiness about other annoying guests in the hotel (he's filming that hotels thing with Monica Galetti at the moment)

So I can't figure out if this outrageous persona for his articles is one he ramps up to the max to get printed in a hugely competitive print market or what's the story.

So that's the point, obviously.

Which makes it worse. He is mining the inner workings of his skewed attitudes and putting them out there for everyone to read. For money.

The point being, this is not harmless, shocking fun. It’s dangerous misogyny wrapped up as close-to-the-knuckle banter.

Men read it and think, crikey if Giles Coren, a successful man with a successful wife can think, act and talk like a perv, then it’s fine.

I saw his wife lit a candle during the week for Miscarriage Awareness Day like a lot of others on Instagram but she didn't mention the details. On a dentists chair? As if it isn't horrific enough!

I 100% believe that his purpose is to be a provocateur like Katie Hopkins. And I believe he's open about it. His wife linked to the Esquire piece on her Instagram and said something like "Fans of Giles will not be disappointed - everyone else will be outraged". So that's the point, obviously.

Dear God. That article. Nothing wrong with wanking, a perfectly healthy and acceptable pastime.

However.

After all, how different from a synthetic foot could a cunt really be?

In those days, my father used to write occasionally for Penthouse and Mayfair and so, in among the stacks of old Punch magazines and Tatlers in his study, there were always naked tits and bums and vadges to be mined, extracted and bespaffed

thanks to single-sex education and a big lonely house in the suburbs, I had literally never met a girl, so had nothing to base my dreams upon.

And when I fell in love, which I often did, the objects of my amour never featured in my mental wankorama, because I didn't want them sullied

.And then when the internet arrived, oh boy. Now it was all dogs and horses and incest,

Ooh, Trollope, that's a word for a slapper, I think I'll have a wank"

But even when breakfast is running late and I'm still in my pyjamas and unshowered at 8:20am and shouting to my wife to get the kid dressed while I belt upstairs to have a shower, I find myself thinking, as soon as I am alone on the top floor of the house: "I've got 10 minutes. Plenty of time for a wank".

Beating madly away with the door locked while you look at a girl who looks a bit like your wife being tied to a ceiling and flayed with a horse crop until she urinates, is all very well if you're going to be shagging your wife later.

And then, of course, she wouldn't be up for it. And I would be furious

There is more to life than masturbating, I guess, is the thing that I have finally grasped after more than 30 years.

I’m no therapist. But early exposure to porn and unregulated Internet use seems to have warped this man’s mind. He is talking to adults and about adults, for ffs.

Sex to him is hopelessly addictive and vital, but at the same time ‘sullies’ women.

He is stuck in a teenage boy’s version of what sex means and every time he drops his trousers, his respect for women seems to drop with them.

If some men’s entitlement to sex means they view women as nothing more than a collection of holes, maybe they are beyond help. In which case, they need to be called out every single bloody time if their misogynistic views have even the slightest effect on a single woman.

And, at the very least, they should shut up and stop talking.

Thank God his libido has dried up because he’s getting older.

Men moaning that they don’t feel they can have a harmless little flirt with the office girls anymore, and THAT being the biggest problem here, are sexual predators disguised as ‘nice guys’. Fuck them