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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.

Giles Coren

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
I used to be a very angry person, I used to throw things and break them. Then I had five years of constant psycho-analysis, and I don’t get angry any more.
GILES COREN

Analysis Angry Break Constant Five Person Physio Thing Use Year
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
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
But still I can never shake the feeling that buses are somehow beneath me. Which is why I have a rule regarding their use: I never, ever run for one. And nor should you.
GILES COREN

Beneath Bus Feel Regard Rule Run Shake Somehow Still
Being a success in the world, having total control of one’s life, is about being able to take or leave things.
GILES COREN

Being Control Have Leave Life One Success Take Thing Word
People like me make modern life intolerable.
GILES COREN

Intolerable Life Mark Modern People
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
GILES COREN

Dad Everything First Job Laugh Person Taught Time
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
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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