Month: December 2016

A.A. Gill

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Even in his grimmest hour, Adrian Gill managed to be very funny:

“Someone should write a paper on the euphemistic size comparisons for tumours. There should be an esite, Euphotumours. The images are very masculine: golf balls, cricket balls, bullets, grenades, ruminant testicles. No one ever says, ‘I’ve got a cancer the size of a fairy cake’.” See his final piece in today’s Sunday Times.

I knew Gill only to shake his hand and exchange the occasional pleasantry, but he was as impressive in person as he was on the page. He seemed to be doing okay 10 days ago, so the news yesterday morning felt very sudden and very shocking. The thought of his nine-year-olds losing him two weeks before Christmas is too much to bear.

 

on the box

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Get me out of here, I’m just an Oxbridge snob:

man trained to scorn, man nauseated by it all,

the popular parade, the Saturday charade,

the unctuous judges, the Pavlovian applause.

 

They’re strictly for the masses,

families on their squelching couches,

yet I goggle Gogglebox and feel faint hope

that even squelching Brexiters are moved

by broken hearts and broken bones.

 

And yes, I even take faint pride

in how my fellow countrymen

can deprecate themselves

and laugh away the rage

that eats us all alive.