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.
GILES CORENPersonally 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.
More Giles Coren Quotes
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Instant gratification is bringing this planet to its knees.
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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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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 world’s most competitive man, my dad. Wouldn’t let us win at Monopoly… he wouldn’t cut any slack for his children.
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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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He was a staffer at Punch but in the evening he wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times.
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I always say what I think to be amusing.
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It was fine for my Polish Ashkenazi forebears to live on dumplings and potatoes, because they laboured in the fields. But that diet is unsuitable for an urban lifestyle.
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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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Gradually, I developed opinions about food, and my French friends taught me that you have to complain in a restaurant.
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My dad never really wrote what he thought. None of his inner rage and darkness and problems, which we all have, made it on to the page. For him, writing was a process of making everything appear funny.
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I’m not a mad, crazy foodie. But I have strong opinions and I know a lot about food.
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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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I let the other reviewers eat the bad meals, so that I didn’t have to, and my wife and I went out only for the good stuff. And I wrote mostly positive reviews. Not only. But mostly. And, ooooh, it felt an awful lot better.
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