To think AA Gill must be the most joyless journalist on the planet.

[Vintageclock]

He just moans and drones about everything. His restaurant reviews are almost unreadable and he seems to make a point of despising the kind of television programmes that the Hoi Polloi love. Why doesn't he just go and live on top of a tree someplace where he can look down on the rest of us, lip curled with total disdain.

Sorry to derail, but the Giles Coren article on fashion week was absolutely superb IMO.

Gracelo - I think Maureen Lipman also said that the four finest words in the English language were "AA Gill is away."

Enjoyed the detail from Nancy about the halitosis.

Giles Coren makes snide comments about the overweight (despite being a tubster himself) and advocates a 'Fat Tax' and is now stereotyping all models as being vacant eyed anorectic victims. I'm sure Lily Cole w/ her Cambridge double first, Christy Turlington w/ her masters in International Development just to name two would agree....Not.

Models are self employed, many of them from a very young age. They fly the World dealing w/ multiple agencies in multiple countries, many speak several languages, many study alongside their careers. They cope w/ a pace and set of demands that would floor most of us.

There are flaws in the industry for sure, racism, sexual abuse and exploitation, negative messages about eating and appearance, Western consumption and a throwaway mentality but what GC said was offensive in the extreme to these hard working young women. They are mostly not passive victims. And you will find exploitation, corruption and greed in every industry, GC's especially. The man makes his living writing about overpriced, ludicrous restaurants (especially those belonging to his mates-Henry Dimbleby for one).

You see, this is why I love MN. Previously, my loathing for this man has gone unsaid. I didn't realise until today that there are so many like-minded people who detest him plus my dp has not a clue who he is and wouldn't give a monkeys if he did

Hurrah! AA Gill is a vile creature. He seems to specialise in being as obscure and as unnecessarily wordy as possible. Clever dickishness personified.

And although GC is very very very pleased with himself ALL the time, some of the stuff he writes is funny.

It makes absolute sense that he is best chums with Jeremy Clarkson. I have my suspicions they were separated at birth.

Did anyone ever see him on Grumpy Old Men. He used to just sit beside Jeremy Clarkson sniggering like a schoolboy at Clarkson't witticisms and saying nothing himself. It looked very odd.

I don't know why the Sunday Times keep using him for restaurant and TV reviews. His posturing preening writing is totally inappropriate for readers who just want to know if a restaurant serves decent food and who enjoy entertaining interesting programmes without wanting to wearily and cynically over analyse their meaning in the greater scheme of life. Give him his own column where he can show off to his heart's content and 90% of the readers can just ignore him.

a review of - Coren, Giles Anger Management for Beginners: A Self-Help Course in 70 Lessons...-
got this review
'The anger bit is pretty obvious but the management aspect is more mysterious. Unless it's that any unsuspecting angry nutter who picks it up assuming it's a self-help manual will eventually put it down thinking, blimey, I don't have a problem at all next to Psycho there.' (Spectrum 20100523)

to be fair he also got this review...
.....'This Week We're... wishing we could be as blunt about life as Giles Coren in his book Anger Management for Beginners...Obesity, footballers, skiing, cycle helmets, barcodes, dogs - nothing escapes his well-aimed, acerbic barbs. We might have the beginnings of an inappropriate crush...' (Glasgow Herald 20100523)

' a Pudenda narrow as a Gulags snout.'

Does he realise a gulag isn't an animal?

Indeed, BalloonSlayer, and nor is it something an arsehole journalist should joke about on a visit to Russia!

Mignonette I think Coren is right about a large proportion of models. They are shamefully treated and are victims of an industry that needs them but generally doesn't seem to care about them. Plenty of ex models would agree with that if you read their comments in articles etc.

I'm not saying I agree with him about fat tax!

Also he is just trying to provoke and writes in an over the top fashion. He probably doesn't think a lot of fashion week (a lot of it seems like fatuous crap to me too) but has worked himself into a wordy rage for the purposes of his article.

AA Gill may well be an arse but over the years he's written some interesting articles on the Sudan famine. But I think his writing is generally designed to provoke a reaction and ought to be taken with a massive dose of salt.

Does he mean an informer in the gulag?
Cos people in the gulag are prob starved so would be quite thin. However an informer would therefore have extra benefits so would probably not be as thin...
(deciphering the meaning that phrase is going to annoy me forever, I just know it! Sign of poor writing not good writing though)

Although the use of the word snout to mean informer is probably a bit too Bill for poseur Coren.

He was talking I think about the people who ran such slave labour camps in a metaphorical manner Balloon and OntheBottom possibly? Maybe thin snout= mean, nasty...? Or it could be a prisoner. That sentence is burned into my brain because the context of the story was so ugly and worrying (Prostitutes/sinister mafiosa/seedy clubs/Jeremy Clarkson and AA Gill) and the intimation was that the girls were not of the age of majority in the UK.

I agree it is a mystery of definition .

Whatever gulag's snout means, and I have no idea, it should be pudendum, pundenda is the plural.

Echo Yes I agree w/ you that models can be shamefully treated and the levels of racism, body image distortion and sexual abuse are appalling. However I just hated the whole 'vacuous' bit. Such a lazy stereotype of his. I don't think GC in his lazy, drug taking mediocre A level and undergraduate years would ever have had the dedication, stamina and drive to succeed in a business like modelling. These girls/women put him in all his achieved-via-nepotism, to shame. He doesn't know the meaning of work.

Pudenda I mean. Whoops.

Dontellafred I'm only paraphrasing him . I didn't write it. Gill will only blame his sub anyway!

I had to come back here because I couldn't understand the Gulag's snout reference but I was too ashamed to ask at the time.

On reflection, I don't mind proclaiming myself as a thicky.

Because when you have to explain a joke, that's the sign that it probably hasn't worked.

Gill looks like he has bad breath. Rod Liddle does. I think it's because the only thing holding his teeth in is tartar.

Sorry mignonette did not mean to shoot the messenger! and yes AAG and (famously) GC both like to have a go at subs whenever possible...

Dont . S'okay, I don't feel shot.

Limited Gaaa-I just gagged when I read your tartar comment. That is worthy of Mr Gill himself .

Whenever I read Gill I always imagine him masturbating along as he writes (using word activated software) in a frenzy of self adulation and excitement. His writing so often has sordid sexual undercurrents anyway. He is so obsessed w/ frotting I imagine he has eroded the corner of his writing desk away.

Gill may indeed be an arrogant arsehole/prick/cretin whatever. But he can at least insult someone without recourse to infantile name-calling. There are plenty of newspapers/mags for the ignorant masses.

Oh good grief that's a mental image I could have lived without.

The Sunday Times is for the ignorant masses these days though isn't it??

Well, I could say that A A Gill is an averagely talented writer with a vastly over-inflated sense of his own capabilities and importance in the world, who seems to delight in insulting anyone who fails to find his favour on the slightest pretext and displays tendencies toward misogyny, homophobia and various other prejudices that should preclude him from spreading them so virulently over the national press.

Or I could stick to my original point i.e. that he is a twat.