What follows is a compilation piece I threw together about the whole Giles Coren thing including the email he sent me, that wasn’t abusive…
Taking the p*ss - when hate figures let you down.
It’s a comedian’s job to lay into things and people who irritate us. Well it’s our job to squeeze laughter out of stuff, but often that means getting irritated and angry with people and that’s okay, it can be a force for good…
About six weeks ago an email that Giles Coren sent to a sub editor was leaked and the columnist/TV presenter really didn’t come out of it too well. The sub had removed an indefinite article, which ruined Giles’ weak saucy joke in a Times restaurant review and his reaction was, well, pretty spectacular. It seemed to confirm that he was a truly obnoxious media tit who deserved to be punished somehow; being sacked by The Times for example or at least forced to review McDonalds, Burger Kings and Greggs the Bakers in perpetuity.
For most of this year I’ve been writing topical songs and making them into little video podcasts for my website, youtube and itunes and that week chose to tackle this very important subject.
Here’s the first verse of the song…
Giles Coren has the charm of an oily garlicky snail
It’s no surprise he sent such an obnoxious email
He may be right about the copy, but he’s still an irritating bloke
his angry email was ten times funnier than his shit blowjob joke
As ever, the video was a massive hit (a few hundred views) and prompted a flurry of comments (3 comments). But then, long after the fuss had died down, I found a new post….
gilescorencunt (3 days ago) Show Hide
That’s so funny. That makes it all worthwhile. You rattle off a fucking nothingy stupid pissed off email to some fuckwit of a sub and months later it gets in the guardian, which is no big fucking deal, and it goes viral, who gives a shit, and then you get a whole actual song! the only bummer is that to post this message i had to create a youtube account and they said that the username gilescoren was taken (so i had to call myself gilescorencunt which is a bit demeaning). who’s got it? why?
Was this the real Giles Coren and did he actually like the song, or was he being sarcastic about my warbling commentary? Being a sensitive artist, I suspected that he hated this barbed attack, hated the song and was just continuing with his superior c*ntery. Although calling himself gilescorenc*nt is quite endearing. No, he was just trying to pull the wool over my eyes, the evil b*st*rd.
I reacted thus on my blog…
Exciting news. Giles Coren has commented on my song about his snotty email. You can see the comment here. At least I’m guessing it must be him. It’s good of Giles to engage in the debate. Except he hasn’t really. Actually there isn’t much of a debate – I’ve sung the song and some people have posted comments. I don’t think he likes the song, but is pleased that someone went to the effort of writing one. There wasn’t much effort into it really – it’s not my best tune, let’s admit it. Actually I just listened back to it and the end’s quite good.
It’s weird that people have posted about Giles’ racist views on youtube
(2 of the 3 comments on my song said Giles was a racist) I hadn’t heard about that – anyone got the evidence? I can’t be arsed to do a google search on it right now. Anyhow, it’s always nice to be noticed, even by the victim of your powerful musical invective, which has surely shaken the media establishment to its foundations. Odd, very odd.
And I thought that would be the end of it, but lo! I check my email inbox and…
Message:
tried to put a comment on youtube but i’m a bit shit at that stuff. just to say: someone sent me the link to your song about me. it’s fucking funny. Maybe it’s just because i’m a vain cunt and nobody’s ever written a song about me before. The whole thing, the jokes, the tone, your sort of diffident manner, is fucking great. and the max moseley thing at the end is the cream - i wish i’d kept that copy of the guardian now, just for that. anyway, there you go. Really funny. and, in its way, far nicer than most of the shit i got over that.
all the best (oh yes, i just always sign off like that, no matter what)
giles
(now i want to write as a refrain:
all the best giles
all the best giles
all the best giles… )
also - you’ll notice that email ended on a stressed syllable.
————————–
That has been published with the author’s permission – not a surprise as he’s being nice, which is nice, but infuriating.
I haven’t pulled him up on the fact that he had managed to put a post on youtube that I’d already seen either, but just then another comment appears…
Lizzie31 (2 days ago)
That is hilarious. What a brilliant song. I’m going to be singing it for weeks.
(Although the two people who think Giles is racist or even “rascist” are twats who have no idea what they’re talking about. Of course he bloody isn’t).
Victoria Coren
This prompted utter fury and anguish as vented in another blog. This is a short extract…
An update on The Coren Situation. The massive t**t has only gone and sent me a nice email. What an utter sh*t. And now his sister’s weighed in with a lovely comment on youtube. Jesus, how can I get angry with the seemingly smug progeny of a much-loved member of Britain’s media establishment when they are being nice to me? This is a complex moral dilemma. Am I so shallow that I succumb to flattery in a nanosecond? Yes. Or have I misjudged the man? We’ll see. If he invites me out on a man date I’ll give you a full personality assessment. I could do one of those minute by minute blogs on my mobile filling you in on his behaviour. It’ll be interesting, but lack any sense of analysis or proportion. Also, it may make the actual dinner chat somewhat stilted. It’s unlikely he’d buy me desert or a digestif.
The full blog goes on about an incident that involved Victoria (at least I think it was her) at university, so go and read the whole thing if that tickles your interest. I’ve cruelly sub-edited this out of my own article, because it’s an irrelevant tangent.
So, how can I go on hating them now? I can’t write a nice song about Giles, it won’t be funny. And will Madonna post a comment on my song about her baby adoption obsession or will Boris Johnson, Ronnie Wood or Princess Diana react thus? Erm, unlikely.
Many newspaper columnists have written about facing people they’ve slagged off in print, some people get angry, some columnists run away in a cowardly middle class fug of embarrassment. I stand by the song – Giles’ email was a highly unpleasant way of pointing out someone’s error, and the joke the sub-editor ruined was a shit joke – but his reaction to it makes me think he might be human. What a way for a hate figure, such a perfect target for comic abuse, to undermine that very status. What a total gilescorenc*nt.
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November 5th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
That’s a truth universally acknowledged that newspapers can make an elephant out of a fly