I always say what I think to be amusing.
GILES CORENGradually, I developed opinions about food, and my French friends taught me that you have to complain in a restaurant.
More Giles Coren Quotes
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I had become mean and stupid and deliberately hurtful because that is what is expected of restaurant critics. Of critics in general.
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I come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.
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It doesn’t matter how much of a hurry you think you are in. Be one of the people for whom ten minutes does not make a difference.
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I have Gordon Ramsay to thank for my TV career because Channel 4 spent a long time trying to find him a sidekick for ‘The F Word’, then he suggested me, knowing I’d stand up to him.
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The first thing I remember is that my dad had a big iron Olivetti typewriter and he worked all night.
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My dad was very successful as a journalist, so I didn’t want to be one. I wanted to be a novelist.
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How clever am I? I’m really quite clever. I mean, look, I’ve got a first-class degree from Oxford.
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At home, we have fish and greens, fish and greens – maybe salmon steak with curried lentils. No poncy cooking goes on, we don’t have dinner parties, we don’t entertain.
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Gentile smoked salmon is all… muscular and smells of smoke. It’s not very fatty. They don’t understand – smoked salmon should be almost spreadable! So you give them the real stuff and they can’t believe how delicious it is.
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The way I write possibly shouldn’t be turned on serious things.
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A man of strong opinions is one thing. But a man whose strong opinions depend entirely on how he is feeling in that instant is a disastrous thing in a city of 10 million people just trying to muddle through.
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All I care about is that people who like me think I’m funny. I get on with writing pretty straight-down the line, old-fashioned stuff.
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People think you get paid millions by the BBC if you’re famous, but me? Me, I’m in the Premier Inn in Gillingham.
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World cross-fertilization is fantastic. Immigration across the world has led to all kinds of fantastic new and exciting kinds of food being available. And there’s all kinds of different kinds of restaurants.
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I know more than most journalists. I know more than most columnists on big, important newspapers.
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Where my dad taught me everything about writing, Graham Paterson, who gave me my first job at The Times, taught me everything about journalism, which is that it’s no big deal, and it’s more important to have a glass of wine.
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I’m just a bit frustrated that in London we make such an effort to ape the New York restaurant scene. I have good friends who ape the New York restaurant scene and do it brilliantly. None of them would claim that the primary reason for going to their restaurant was the food.
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Personally I ride a bicycle, travel by train and bus and campaign tirelessly for a car taxation system that will hammer ignorant, selfish, petty, fat, spoilt, stupid car abusers into giving up their addiction and walking.
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I used to be so angry. I think back to my early days as a critic in the late 1990s, and I blush.
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My dad is the best and funniest newspaper columnist. There is nobody anywhere near as good.
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When I tell people I spent almost a year in Paris, I know they imagine something out of a Woody Allen movie, which it wasn’t, of course. I was just working in a clothes shop, but I was aware that it was exciting.
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In the beginning, we huddled in cities for our own protection.
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I was 41 when I became a dad. I try to be as much fun as my father was, but I’m at home more – and less of a disciplinarian.
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I think unionization of labour is a great thing.
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Not since Ancient Greece have cities been thought of as the ideal living environment for humans. And that was so long ago it predates the invention of trousers.
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My sister’s also very, very competitive but she is more concerned than I am with being liked. So she hides it away. I try to make my competitiveness part of my charm.
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