Adrian Anthony Gill (born 28 June 1954) is a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
newspaper
columnistA columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating copy that can sometimes be strongly opinionated. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs on the Internet....
and writer, using the byline A. A. Gill. He is currently employed by the
Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
as their restaurant reviewer and television critic. His essays are known for their humour and satirical content, but have caused offence to various groups, including
the EnglishThe English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
,
the WelshThe Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
,
AlbaniansAlbanians are a people from southeast Europe who live in Albania and neighboring countries. They speak the Albanian language. About half of them live in Albania, with other large groups residing in Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro...
, and
GermansThe German people are an ethnic group, in the sense of sharing a common German culture, descent, and speaking the German language as a mother tongue. Within Germany, Germans are defined by citizenship , distinguished from people of German ancestry...
.
A.A. Gill was born in
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
, the son of television producer
Michael GillGeorge Michael Gill was a television producer and television director responsible for creating 'ground-breaking' documentaries for the BBC....
and his wife, actress
Yvonne GilanYvonne Gilan is an English actress who is best remembered for her portrayal of Mrs. Peignoir in Fawlty TowersIn 1964 she wrote a short fantasy film The Peaches, starring Juliet Harmer, with a small cameo role for her son, Adrian as a bespectacled chess player...
, and brother to Nick, however the family moved to the South of England when he was one year old.
Adrian Anthony Gill (born 28 June 1954) is a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
newspaper
columnistA columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating copy that can sometimes be strongly opinionated. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs on the Internet....
and writer, using the byline A. A. Gill. He is currently employed by the
Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
as their restaurant reviewer and television critic. His essays are known for their humour and satirical content, but have caused offence to various groups, including
the EnglishThe English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity as a people is of early medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn....
,
the WelshThe Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
,
AlbaniansAlbanians are a people from southeast Europe who live in Albania and neighboring countries. They speak the Albanian language. About half of them live in Albania, with other large groups residing in Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro...
, and
GermansThe German people are an ethnic group, in the sense of sharing a common German culture, descent, and speaking the German language as a mother tongue. Within Germany, Germans are defined by citizenship , distinguished from people of German ancestry...
.
Biography
A.A. Gill was born in
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
, the son of television producer
Michael GillGeorge Michael Gill was a television producer and television director responsible for creating 'ground-breaking' documentaries for the BBC....
and his wife, actress
Yvonne GilanYvonne Gilan is an English actress who is best remembered for her portrayal of Mrs. Peignoir in Fawlty TowersIn 1964 she wrote a short fantasy film The Peaches, starring Juliet Harmer, with a small cameo role for her son, Adrian as a bespectacled chess player...
, and brother to Nick, however the family moved to the South of England when he was one year old. He moved to
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
to study at the
Central Saint Martins College of Art and DesignCentral Saint Martins College of Art and Design is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is widely regarded as a leading British art and design school.Best Design Schools in the World-Profile:Central Saint Martins College of Art and...
and the Slade School of Art. He is a recovered alcoholic who drank until the age of 30. Gill suffers from severe
dyslexiaDyslexia is a learning disorder that manifests itself primarily as a difficulty with reading and spelling. It is separate and distinct from reading difficulties resulting from other causes, such as a non-neurological deficiency with vision or hearing, or from poor or inadequate reading instruction....
and, consequently, all of his works are written by amanuenses.
He was once ejected from one of
Gordon RamsayGordon James Ramsay, OBE, is a Scottish-born British chef, television personality and restaurateur. He has been awarded a total of 16 Michelin Stars, and in 2001 became one of only three chefs in the United Kingdom to hold three Michelin stars at one time...
's restaurants, along with his dining partner
Joan CollinsJoan Henrietta Collins OBE is an English actress, author, and columnist.-Early life:Collins was born in Paddington, London, the daughter of Elsa , a dance teacher and nightclub hostess, and Joseph William Collins, an agent whose clients would later include Shirley Bassey, The Beatles and Tom Jones...
. Ramsay's reason was that Gill had written a review of his restaurant that covered his personal life more than the food, including calling him a wonderful chef, but a "second-rate human being".
Gill has been critical of Welsh people; in 1998 his descriptions of Welsh people as "loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls" in
The Sunday Times were reported to the
Commission for Racial EqualityThe Commission for Racial Equality was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom which aimed to tackle racial discrimination and promote racial equality...
as racist. Gill's comment was used as a prime example of what was described as "persistent anti-Welsh racism in the UK media" in a motion in the
National Assembly for WalesThe National Assembly for Wales is a devolved assembly with power to make legislation in Wales. The Assembly comprises 60 members, who are known as Assembly Members, or AMs...
put forward by 18 AMs representing the four main political parties.
Gill has also been critical of the English describing them as "embarrassing" and an "ugly race" as well as a "lumpen and louty, coarse, unsubtle, beady-eyed, beefy-bummed herd".
In spite of this combative approach, Gill is known to be sensitive to criticism of his own work, with comments which disagree with his reviews sparingly printed in the
Times.
A.A. Gill and the Isle of Man
His best known running feud however has been with the
Isle of ManThe Isle of Man , or Mann , is a self-governing British Crown dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Britain and Ireland. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Crown is represented by a Lieutenant Governor...
ever since his first review in
The Sunday Times of 22 January 2006 of Ciappelli's restaurant in Douglas also included a critique of the island which:
managed to slip through a crack in the space-time continuum...fallen off the back of the history lorry to lie amnesiac in the road to progress...its main industry is money (laundering, pressing, altering and mending)...everyone you actually see is Benny from Crossroads or Benny in drag...The weather’s foul, the food’s medieval, it’s covered in suicidal motorists and folk who believe in fairies.
This sparked off a minor diplomatic incident, the review being attacked in
TynwaldTynwald , or more formally, the High Court of Tynwald is the bicameral legislature of the Isle of Man. It consists of the directly elected House of Keys and the indirectly chosen Legislative Council....
with
House of KeysThe House of Keys is the directly elected lower branch of Tynwald, the parliament of the Isle of Man, the other branch being the Legislative Council....
member David Cannan demanding an apology for this "unacceptable and scurrilous attack", whilst Tourism Minister David Cretney claimed it would harm the island's tourism.
Personal life
Gill's first wife was the author Cressida Connolly, a daughter of the writer
Cyril ConnollyCyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer.-Early life:Cyril Connolly was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, the only child of Matthew William Kemble Connolly, an officer in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, by his wife Muriel Maud Vernon, daughter of an...
. They later divorced.
His second wife was Amber Rudd, a financial journalist and former Conservative parliamentary candidate. They have two children, Flora and Alasdair.
He has a long-term relationship with Nicola Formby, editor at large of the
TatlerTatler has been the name of several British journals and magazines, each of which has viewed itself as the successor of the original literary and society journal founded by Richard Steele in 1709...
, who appears in his column as "The Blonde". They have twins, Edith and Isaac, born in March 2007.
Gill identified himself in
The Sunday Times as being of partly
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
n descent.
Further reading