AIBU to feel really annoyed after seeing the trailer for Giles Coren’s new series on BBC2

[FlirtyKirti]

Here is the trailer: m.youtube.com/watch?v=KQrphDomnLk

Last year Giles mocked the death of Dawn Foster, a disabled journalist from a working class background, which caused additional distress to her grieving family. He has never apologised. It is possible to cancel your Times subscription or to not buy the newspaper, but we all pay our TV license fee and the idea of it funding the salary of such a spiteful silver spooner and for him to go partying around five star hotels really, really irks me. Why has he faced absolutely no consequences? Why is he still in print and on TV? Piers Morgan was forced to resign for saying he didn’t believe Megan Markle saying she was suicidal. Surely laughing at someone’s premature death and hoping that they go to hell is much worse than that?

Is there some sort of BBC forum I can complain to? I’m not even going to mention his terrible sex scene writing.

RIP A.A. Gill. Now he really was a writer and a gentleman.

A writer yes, a gentleman? Not so much.

He shot a baboon because he said he wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/26/aa-gill-shot-baboon

Not to mention his comments about Claire Balding and Mary Beard.

I don't read columns etc

But I feel like Gill was pretty awful? Pp comment may be some reason think that. It's all a bit can't remember but name made me think, seem to remember not a good 'un.

OP sure not on purpose but you seem to be trying to derail your own thread!

He clearly felt extremely wounded. Does anyone know what the lady said to elicit this response?

Another version of the tweet read: “When someone dies who has trolled you on Twitter, saying vile and hurtful things about you and your family, is it okay to be like, 'I’m sorry for the people who loved you, and any human death diminishes me, but can you fuck off on to hell now where you belong'?"

All this discussion shows the problem with 'celebrity' culture. There is a whole class of them making a living by selling their 'personlaities' , maybe they got their chance by nepotism , maybe they danced or cooked or ate insects to prominence. As long as we the viewers watch, the programme makers will carry on. I know about the hotel programme because the BBC shows clips between other programmes, I would never watch it because it has G Coren in it and he has been prety nasty about obese people like me for which I totally judge him and condemn him. Not that he cares, as has been shown on this thread by so many others he thinks he is being clever making vile comments. Nasty words and comments do hurt people deeply, I stopped watching Mock the Week years ago after F Boyle's comments on the swimmer Rebecca Aldington which she has since said affected her for years and made her think she needed surgery when she is a lovely young woman. not to mention the other 'comedians' who thought it so funny to make repeated jokes about Prince Harry's paternity. Those who say comedy should have free reign to joke about anything in any terms people will pay for, I would ask really? Really? I don't set myself up as a censor but I do have a personal block list which is very, very long. If I knew or interacted with anyone who thought it is OK to use personal appearance in any way (fat, thin, old, ugly, short, whatever) as some kind of moral yardstick, i'd also block them from my life. It's not clever and it's not funny.

What the lady said to elicit this response?

Like the wording..!

Can you think of anything that could be said. To make it understandable to publicly post that on hearing of their death. At 34.

When they can't see it but you know it will be noted and get to the family.

Saying she on way to hell where they belong.

?

It's her family and friends who given his profile, WILL get to hear that.

What do you think would make that any less appalling?

Lentil sorry just noticed-

'Another version of the tweet read'

It's s while back I only saw one I think. There were versions? You mean he posted similar more than once?

As you obv know would be good if you could post the other version/s. New info, to me anyway.

AA Gill wrote well and was funny. I don’t think either of those things can be said about GC

Gill/ being short (?!) are surely different topics?

What gc has said and done, and given that, whether he's a good choice for primetime family viewing on major TV channel. Is a question that seems to be plenty to be going on with in terms of opinions!

I say no he isn't.

@CheeseMmmm
What has GR done that is similar to this?

Quote from The Guardian:

he showed an audience of several thousand at the Melbourne Good Food and Wine show a doctored photograph of a woman naked on all fours, with multiple breasts and a pig's face, announcing that it depicted Grimshaw, who had interviewed him on the previous night. "That's Tracy Grimshaw," he said. "I had an interview with her yesterday, holy crap. She needs to see Simon Cowell's Botox doctor."

I thought A.A. Gill’s autobiography Pour Me: A Life was wonderful. Also his writing about his alcoholism and his war reporting from places like Haiti for Vanity Fair we’re wonderful. He reviewed TV shows but I don’t think he actually appeared on TV, and certainly not on prime time BBC programming like GC does. So I don’t think the two are really comparable, other than both being food writers and A.A. Gill being beloved and being a league above GC. The photo incident that @madisonbridges mentions sounds in poor taste but was clearly a joke. I still love A.A. Gill unapologetically.

*were wonderful

@madisonbridges Sorry, I realise the incident at the Melbourne Food & Wine show was Gordon Ramsay, not A.A. Gill. Do people think he should be cancelled? Sorry, I don’t. Kitchen Nightmares is a brilliant format that is also popular in the US. Also he is a fantastic chef. I once met Gordon Ramsay many years ago at a charity event and he was really lovely to a group of old ladies who were there. So on a personal level I am biased about him.

Loved A.A. Gill's writing, and also his double-act with Jeremy Clarkson on Grumpy Old Men. I don't care how reactionary or shock-jocky or inappropriate their views, provided they can skilfully string words together (as those two both can).

Ignoring all the stuff about Giles Coren’s appearance, which feels like a cheap shot, I’d say my problem with him is his total hypocrisy, which is linked, I suspect, to a lack of talent.

He talks a lot about how his thing is to shock, to make ‘funny’ comments that are on or over the edge. Except these comments are often about easy or very traditional targets - like the one about Emma Watson in a screenshot above. He’s not an iconoclast, he’s not changing the shape of society, he’s a rich, white man punching down every time.

He then responds with extreme bad temper and spite to anyone criticising him. His go-to retorts are around rape and child abuse. That’s disturbing. The fact he waited until Dawn Foster had died to come back at her comments is telling. I’ve seen both on Twitter over the years and have no doubt she would have engaged with him had he responded to her tweets, but he didn’t.

I imagine he is enormously aware that he is where is he through nepotism and is lashing out from insecurity. It can’t be a comfortable position.

I think the main issue I have is not so much that I find him obnoxious but that he is employed by The BBC. The BBC is such an old boys club. (Oxbridge, white, privilidged, connected, London based etc)

It’s interesting that although Giles is such a prolific and high profile food critic he’s never done Masterchef or Bake Off, which are arguably the UK’s most high profile food programmes. There have been so many series of Masterchef and Jay Rayner is a judge on it and yet Giles has never been on it. I wonder why? Also Mel, his old side kick from Super Sizers, is on Bake Off and yet Giles has never been on the show. I imagine some commissioning editors must regard him as too much of a risk in case he says something racist or his abuse of people on social media escalates go the extent that a series had to be cancelled before it is broadcast. There was a production assistant from the F Word who said he’d told her she was only there as “a box ticking exercise”. Maybe he is awful for the crew to work with as well.

This is the article accusing him of making a racist comment during the production of the F Word: www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/giles-coren-deletes-twitter-account-22130156.amp

GC wrote an article about Circumcising his son. There is lots of chat about it on social media but the article has been removed. Can anyone find it?

@DontBeCatty It was an article called The Foreskin Dilemma for Esquire with an accompanying image of him holding a massive open pair of scissors with his toddler son on his knee. It seems to have been removed though. I imagine that it might be the sort of thing that his son could be teased at school about and perhaps he asked for it to be removed, and also the fat shaming article too.

www.esquire.com/uk/life/a15953/giles-coren-fatherhood/

This is a quotation from the article (that someone reposted part of on another thread): "The Eighties boarding school anti-Semites may have got to me but that shouldn't give them a victory over my unborn son. Indeed, should he pass 6ft 6ins and 16 stone (as he rather promises to do), I'd quite like him to go and seek the motherfuckers out and butt-rape them to death with his giant, circumcised Jewish schlong."

This is from 2008. Giles is complaining that he doesn’t like anyone editing his copy.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media/2008/jul/23/mediamonkey

That letter to the subs never gets old. He is seriously fucked up, isn’t he? Imagine being married to him or that being your father. It must be like living with a tinder box that everyone is anticipating is going to suddenly explode. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t really done many food programmes apart from the F Word years ago.

The reason he hasn't been on shows is because no one likes him and he's well known as a talentless dick who no one wants work with.

The only reason he has a job at all is his because people loved and respected his dad.

I think the number of times that he has written about his own children in a sexual way and has referenced rape in connection to children is really concerning, even if it is hyperbole or satire.

"And then I sit and stare at her, like the dippiest lover, not talking, transfixed by her beauty. Unable quite to drink it all in. Missing heartbeats at the way she gazes out at the sea through her long, curling lashes while slurping Coke through her pursed, plump little lips. And doing this I realise how being on holiday with my tiny daughter is the most insanely romantic holiday, in some ways even the sexiest holiday, that I’ve ever had." (about a holiday to Antigua with his 3 year old daughter)

• "The Eighties boarding school anti-Semites may have got to me but that shouldn't give them a victory over my unborn son. Indeed, should he pass 6ft 6ins and 16 stone (as he rather promises to do), I'd quite like him to go and seek the motherfuckers out and butt-rape them to death with his giant, circumcised Jewish schlong." (about cicumsizing his toddler son)

• "I don’t care if he runs every letter of the LGBTQI spectrum to the end and back, and comes home with a cock in every hole and says he’s changed his name to Rita. As long as he isn’t fat." (the article fat-shaming his son)

He also told a 12 year old girl who criticised one of his articles on Twitter that "I’m going to rape your father.” www.thecomet.net/news/tv-presenter-slams-hitchin-schoolgirls-in-twitter-rant-5255794

And that is in addition to what he said about his neighbour: " "Next door have brought their 12-year-old son a drum kit. For f*k's sake! Do I kill him then burn it? Or do I f*k him, then kill him then burn it?"

Jimmy Saville's crimes are still fairly recent, and the BBC ignored the fact he often openly joked about his liaisons with young girls. I'm not saying the same thing is the case about Giles Coren, but it is super weird and inappropriate, especially for a father to refer to his children that way.

I agree with @KentishTowner. It’s completely bizarre and hypocritical that the BBC tolerates this and puts him up to repeatedly host family entertainment. Have the corporation learnt nothing from the stain left by Jimmy Saville? It makes me sick that it is publicly funded.