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A. A. Gill Biography

Adrian Anthony Gill (28 June 1954 – 10 December 2016) was a British writer and critic. Best known for food and travel writing, he was The Sunday Times' restaurant reviewer as well as a television critic. He also wrote for Vanity Fair, GQ and Esquire, and published numerous books. Gill wrote his first piece for Tatler in 1991, and joined The Sunday Times in 1993.

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A. A. Gill Quotes

I still secretly believe that afternoons are the time for the test card and you shouldn't watch television when the sun is out.

Believe, Card, Cards, Sun, Time, Watches

Celebrity is a national drama whose characters' parts and plots are written by the tabloids, gossip columnists, websites and interactive buttons. The famous don't actually have to turn up to their own lives at all.

Drama, Character, America, Gossip, Lives, Plots

He (Jeremy Clarkson) is the last man standing on the beach commanding the glaciers' melt waters to go back

Beach, Man, Men, Water, Waters

It's a great historical joke that when the Spanish met the Aztecs, it was a blind date made in serve-you-right heaven. At the time, they were the two most unpleasant cultures in the entire world, and richly deserved each other. Still, the story of how stout Cortes blustered, bullied and bludgeoned his way to collapsing an entire empire with a handful of contagious hoodlums is astonishing.

Two, History, Heaven, Unpleasant, Deserved, Hoodlums

Science fiction is never about the future, in the same way history is rarely about the past: they're both parable formats for examining or commenting on the present.

Fiction, Parable, Past, Present, Same, Way

Making a programme that appears to condone a positive stereotype actually enforces all the negative ones as well. It says that they all have a valid point. To assert that Americans are naive, Germans humourless and the French arrogant is one thing: they're big enough to take it. But to say that there's a conspiracy of Jewish bankers, that gypsies are thieves, Pakistanis are dirty and refugees are muggers is something quite else.

Bankers, Dirty, Negative, Programme, Says, Stereotype

Get up now and go and find Robert Kilroy-Silk. Smile in a warm, friendly sort of way, then punch him on the nose. Now go and find Robert on television, despite my best endeavours, this is still relatively easy to do. Wait for a close-up, same smile, and punch him on the nose. If you followed the instructions carefully, you will have noticed a distinct difference. On the one hand, you were suffused with a sense of public-spirited righteousness; on the other, you're probably dribbling blood. That's the difference between reality in life and reality on television.

Blood, Difference, Differences, Distinct, Easy, Reality

Nobody ever forgets their first night in the bush. It's among the precious, meagre handful of life firsts that remain indelible.

Bush, Firsts, Inspire, Night, Nobody, Precious

The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents, this isn’t wishful thinking. It’s the rule.

Adults, Interesting, Malcontents, School, Thinking

The usual sniggering examples of animal behaviour were brought in to explain cheating. Funny how the behaviour of shrews and gibbons is never used to explain table manners or road safety or gardening, only sex. Anyway, it was bad Darwinism. Taking the example of a monkey and applying it to yourself misses the point that animal behaviour is made for the benefit of the species, not as an excuse for the individual. Being incapable of sustaining a stable pair and supporting children is really not in the interests of our species. Neither is it really in the best interests of the philanderer.

Animal, Cheating, Children, Manners, Road, Sex

Americans think the only funny Brits are John Cleese, Benny Hill and whoever makes our toothpaste. They're not laughing with us, they are laughing at us.

Americans, Laughing, Television, Think, Thinking, Toothpaste

Television in the 1960s & 70s had just as much dross and the programmes were a lot more tediously patronising than they are now. Memory truncates occasional gems into a glittering skein of brilliance. More television, more channels means more good television and, of course, more bad. The same equation applies to publishing, film and, I expect, sumo wrestling.

Good, Mean, Memories, Skein, Tediously, Wrestling

Once upon a time, a historian told me that the most important choice a new historian could make was of his or her specialist subject. Most of the good stuff was far too overcrowded, so you had to pick about in the exotic and extinct. His recommendations were the Picts or the Minoans, because hardly anything was known about them and you could spend a happy lifetime of speculation.

Good, Happy Life, History, Important Choices, Known, Pick

A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the brigadiers, then a bit of a gap and the colonels and wing commanders and passed-over majors, then a steady trickle of captains and lieutenants. As they get older and rarer, so the soldiers are mythologised and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honours like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that.

Boys, Field, Gap, Mythologised, Peace, War

The truth and the facts aren't necessarily the same thing. Telling the truth is the object of all art; facts are what the unimaginative have instead of ideas.

Art, Ideas, Knowledge, Object, Telling, Thing

America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.

Civilization, America, Profound, Cleverer

Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.

Country, Eye, Kids, Poor, Riches, Sports

Television gives us the gift to see ourselves as we'd like to be seen.

Giving, Television, Gift, Like, Seen, Gives

There were moments when I wondered at the gossamer veil that stops licence from being libel. I suspect that taking on the job of England manager puts you outside the protection of the courts. It must be part of the job description that you will be held hostage by media speculation and can have your character tortured, molested and finally executed at the public whim, in exchange for a lifetime's supply of money.

Executed, Football, Jobs, Molested, Soccer, Stops

A lobster bisque ought to be the crowning glory of the potager. And this one was excellent. Silky as a gigolo's compliment and fishy as a chancellor's promise.

Compliment, Crowning, Excellent, Glory, Lobster, Promise

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