black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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 Coren

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
My dad Alan loved Westerns and we watched them together when there wasn’t much else on TV. I had toy cowboys I’d call Richard Widmark or Gregory Peck and we’d restage the Battle of the Alamo.
GILES COREN

Battle Call Country Cowboy Dad Else Love Much My Restage Together Watch
My dad is the best and funniest newspaper columnist. There is nobody anywhere near as good.
GILES COREN

Anywhere Best Columnist Dad Funny Good Newspaper Nobody
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.
GILES COREN

Awful Better Feel Felt Good Mostly Review Stuff Wife Wrote
I come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.
GILES COREN

Bad Come Country Press Reputation
So what on Earth there isn’t to like about New York? I don’t know. But what you do also have is a load of very ordinary restaurants which you make a terrible fuss about which are really only very average. Which is fine. One doesn’t go to New York for the food.
GILES COREN

Average Country Earth Fus Know Load Make Restuarant
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
He was a staffer at Punch but in the evening he wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times.
GILES COREN

Column Evening Punch Staffer Standard Time Wrote
I would go swaggering into restaurants in some ridiculous tramp disguise, challenging them to mistreat me, order the things I was least likely to enjoy, then hurl my plate aside in a fury and demand to see the manager.
GILES COREN

Challenge Demand Disguise Hurt Likely Manager Mistreat Order Plate Restaurant Ridiculous Swagger Think Tramp
We built walls around them with slits through which to fire arrows at scary, cross-eyed rural people, and brought our food and family inside because they were the safest places to be.
GILES COREN

Arrow Brought Build Cross Family Food Inside People Place Rural Safety Scary Wall
My time in Paris was an education in both the grimness of a relentless, grinding day job and the joys of nights in glittering restaurants.
GILES COREN

Both Day Education Glitter Grimness Grind Job Joy Relentless Restaurant Time
The first thing I remember is that my dad had a big iron Olivetti typewriter and he worked all night.
GILES COREN

Big Dad First Iron Night Olivetti Remember Thing Typewriter Work
My dad was very successful as a journalist, so I didn’t want to be one. I wanted to be a novelist.
GILES COREN

Dad Journalist Novelist One Successful Want
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
Of course you can get a decent mouthful of food in New York. You can get a decent mouthful of food in Nairobi.
GILES COREN

Country Course Denied Food Mouthful Nairobi
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

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Giles Coren Quotes