Sunday 11 December 2016

Sunday Part 2

Well, that was a waste of a day. After not being able to sleep last night - I've managed to spend most of the day in bed and now I feel totally wrecked. It's about 4pm and I am just waiting for it to get dark. I knew I was a bit run down, but I can really feel it now.

It's going to be fairly mild this week, and mostly dry - we could do with it, spending a lot less money on keeping this place warm might be a drop in the ocean - but it helps.

AA Gill

I'm sure you won't have missed the news that he's the latest 'celebrity' to die this year. I'm managed to get 'everybody's back up' by making it clear I didn't like him. I thought he was vain, self absorbed, smug, privileged and a bully.  He was also a totally pointless person, his greatest talent was being entertaining if you like a certain kind of 'entertainment'. It's become the norm for people to throw their hands in the air and wail everyone time someone dies, flooding social media with hashtags and links to their finest moments. Most of my friends on the 'left' have referred to a piece he wrote about the stupidity of Brexit. Well, of course - I totally agree that Brexit was, and is, very stupid. His entire thesis seems to be based on the appearance of one woman on Question Time, who he mocked and sneered at. That woman was very wrong, but her opposition to Europe is more to do with her fears, her lack of experience and information, the failure of the left to support or acknowledge her and the success of the right in exploiting her. She was not a bad person, but Gill mocked her for her opinions, her class and her very place in the world - and we all followed - that's why the Leavers won. Because of people like Gill. He applied the same thinking to his 'work' as a restaurant and food critic (A job for people in the media who have failed at everything else, including being a decent human being). He entertained people with cruelty and spite. I'm not a big fan of restaurants - I loathe being served by anyone, I find it offensive and demeaning (I've had to do it myself, it reminds you how low your place in the world can be) and I don't much like restaurants and food outlets anyway - they are usually overpriced vanity projects. I think it's perfectly reasonable to review and be fairly critical of anything - that's how we learn - but I don't feel the need to tear something to pieces and stamp on it. Frankly - it's just a meal - we will eat scraps of the floor if we are hungry enough, it's nor science - art or religion. And I don't like my food being messed about with - there really isn't that much point. Gill's fame was based on being entertaining and cruel and smug and mean spirited. All his personal demons were just symptoms of his privilage and self absorbtion. People today have told me I should respect him because he was elegant and well dressed (he apparently had a lot of nice suits...) and that he was witty, funny and acerbic. I just thought he was cruel. He mocked and sneered, that's all. He famously killed a baboon, just because he wanted to know what it was like to kill, and then wrote about it, a lot, to let everyone know how witty, sophisticated and smug he was. I thought he was a shit.

5 comments:

Letterslive said...

My feelings about AA Gill, in a nutshell.

Mark Rochester said...

Didn't read him, but his comments on Maureen Lipman quoted in his guardian obituary will stay with me as a memorial to his unpleasantness.
I'm not a fan of hers but they were quite repugnantly disgusting, absolutey no justification for them regardless of however well turned out he was.

Anonymous said...

He was also married for a while to your other favourite person – Amber Rudd ;)
Natalie

Nicola said...

I will miss his columns because he could really write. Yes, he was a satirist, but so was Jane Austen. He was particularly good on sham programs like The Apprentice which have NOTHING to do with venture capitalism.

Best wishes, though I do like your blog!


Richard de Pesando MA(RCA) said...

I'm just trying to get my head around Jane Austen as a guest on The Apprentice.

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