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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

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
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
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
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 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
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
In the beginning, we huddled in cities for our own protection.
GILES COREN

Beginning City Huddle Own Protection
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
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
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

City Depend Entire Instant Madden Men Million Opinion People Strong Try
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
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
I’m just a bit frustrated that in London we make such an effort to ape the New York restaurant scene. I have good friends who ape the New York restaurant scene and do it brilliantly. None of them would claim that the primary reason for going to their restaurant was the food.
GILES COREN

Ape Country Effort Frustrated Line Restaurant Scene
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
We’ve got rid of subeditors because we don’t need them. Because they were never necessary. They were just fetchers and gophers. They had a job, which has been superannuated by technology.
GILES COREN

Fetch Gopher Job Need Subeditor Supernatural Technology
When I write I inhabit a personality that is and is not me.
GILES COREN

Inhabit Me Not Personally Write
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
The way I write possibly shouldn’t be turned on serious things.
GILES COREN

Possible Serious Thing Turn Way Write
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.
GILES COREN

Career Channel Know People Sidekick Spent Stand Suggest
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
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 always say what I think to be amusing.
GILES COREN

Always Anything Say Thing
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
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 come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.
GILES COREN

Bad Come Country Press Reputation
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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