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He was a staffer at Punch but in the evening he wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times.

Giles Coren

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
How clever am I? I’m really quite clever. I mean, look, I’ve got a first-class degree from Oxford.
GILES COREN

Class Clever Country Degree First Look Mean
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
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

Alone Become Dad Father Home More
Instant gratification is bringing this planet to its knees.
GILES COREN

Bring Gratification Instant Knee Planet
The way I write possibly shouldn’t be turned on serious things.
GILES COREN

Possible Serious Thing Turn Way Write
I come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.
GILES COREN

Bad Come Country Press Reputation
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
I always say what I think to be amusing.
GILES COREN

Always Anything Say Thing
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
I know more than most journalists. I know more than most columnists on big, important newspapers.
GILES COREN

Communist Important Journalist Know More Most Newspaper
In the beginning, we huddled in cities for our own protection.
GILES COREN

Beginning City Huddle Own Protection
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
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
People like me make modern life intolerable.
GILES COREN

Intolerable Life Mark Modern People
I used to be so angry. I think back to my early days as a critic in the late 1990s, and I blush.
GILES COREN

Angry Back Blush Critic Day Early Late Think Use
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.
GILES COREN

Abuse Campaign Car Hammer Ignorant Pretty Ride Selfish System Talk Taxation Tirelessly Travel Walk
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
I have a tailor now, I have a doctor, a wine merchant, a jeweller, a gardener, a cleaner, and a nanny. It was clearly ridiculous that I did not have a hairdresser. So I got one.
GILES COREN

Clearly Doctor Gardner Hairdresser Many Merchant Ridiculous Tailor
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.
GILES COREN

Curried Fish Green Home Lentis Salmon Steak
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.
GILES COREN

Difference Hurry Matter Minute Much One Ten Think
I always feel quite Jewish but I used to deny it until I was in my twenties.
GILES COREN

Always Quite Deny Jewish Twenties Use
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
I tried to leave the city once, for one of those other places. And, my God, the silence. I could hear myself think, and found that I wasn’t. I am not designed to be lonely as a cloud.
GILES COREN

City Cloud Design Ear God Leve Lonely Myself Place Try
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
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
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.
GILES COREN

All Appear Dad Darkness Everything Funny Inner Made Make Page Problem Rage Really Though Wrote

He was a staffer at Punch but in the evening he wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times.

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He was a staffer at Punch but in the evening he wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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