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As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.

Giles Coren

I come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.
GILES COREN

Bad Come Country Press Reputation
People think you get paid millions by the BBC if you’re famous, but me? Me, I’m in the Premier Inn in Gillingham.
GILES COREN

Bbc Country Million Paid People Premier Think
As a broadly left-wing, environmentally aware urban believer in anthropogenic global warming, I am all for a total ban on motor vehicles.
GILES COREN

Anthropogenic Aware Ban Believer Environment Left Motor Urban Vehicle Wing
When I was 16 my dad taught me to drive too. Furiously. Unable to understand why I couldn’t already do it – for driving, to him, was innate in the human. It was what separated us from the apes. And from the French, who weren’t much good at it either.
GILES COREN

Country Drive Either Furious Good Innate Separate Taught Unable Understand
The notion of getting pleasure from food has gone too far; we can also get pleasure from anticipating a meal, and from not being quite sated.
GILES COREN

Anticipate Being Far Food Gone Meal Motion Pleasure Quite
Mineral water is a preposterous vanity, either bottled in glass which is stupidly heavy to freight, or in plastic that ends up in one of the plastic patches the size of Texas occupying our oceans.
GILES COREN

Bottle Freight Glass heavy Mineral Occupy Ocean Patch Plastic Preposterous Stupidity Water
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.
GILES COREN

Cloth Excite Imagine Movie People Shop Sometime Work Year
You can get a decent mouthful of food in Warsaw or Chad if you look hard enough. It’s just I wouldn’t actually go there looking for the food.
GILES COREN

Actual Decent Enough Food Hard Lok Mouthful Wound
As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.
GILES COREN

Car City Cling Desert Driver Father Great Man More Really Without
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.
GILES COREN

Country Dumpling Field Fine Forebear Labour Lifestyle People Polish Potato Unsuitable Urban
The world’s most competitive man, my dad. Wouldn’t let us win at Monopoly… he wouldn’t cut any slack for his children.
GILES COREN

Children Competetive Cut Dad Monopoly Stack World
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.
GILES COREN

Delicious Fatty Feel Muscular Real Smell Smoke Stuff Understand
Gradually, I developed opinions about food, and my French friends taught me that you have to complain in a restaurant.
GILES COREN

Complain Country Develop Food Friend Gradually Restaurant Taught
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.
GILES COREN

Being Charm Competitive Competitiveness Concern More Most Try World
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.
GILES COREN

All Care Fashion Funny Old People Pretty Straight Stuff Write
I had become mean and stupid and deliberately hurtful because that is what is expected of restaurant critics. Of critics in general.
GILES COREN

Critic Deliberate Expect General Hurtful Mean Restaurant Stupid

As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.

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As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.

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