Giles Coren

Coren has been a restaurant critic for The Times since 2002, having previously been restaurant critic for Tatler magazine and The Independent on Sunday. He was named "Food And Drink Writer of the Year"[9] at the 2005 British Press Awards and in 2016 was named Restaurant Writer of the Year at the Fortnum and Mason Awards.[10][11] As well as his restaurant work, he also contributes a regular column to The Times, the subjects of which range from personal life to politics. Under the pseudonym Professor Gideon Garter he wrote The Intellectual's Guide to Fashion for The Sunday Times.[12]

According to a paper published in Journalism Practice by Dr. Peter English and Dr. David Fleischman, Coren is "a sharp, witty columnist who can write with tongue in cheek". According to an English study, the average grade in Coren's reviews in The Times was 6.86. Coren claims his average score is actually 6.3, but should be 5; however, he produces "no more than half a dozen really bad" reviews a year.[13]

Coren has contributed articles to publications including Tatler and GQ. In November 2014, he joined Time Out as a columnist, writing weekly on city life.[14]

Coren is credited by inventor James Dyson as the co-author of his autobiography published in 1997.[15]

In 2005, he published his first novel, Winkler, reviewed in the New Statesman[16] and The Independent.[17] One section of the novel won the Literary Review's "Bad Sex in Fiction Award".[18][19]

Coren has also written two non-fiction books: the first, Anger Management (For Beginners), a compilation of columns he had written for The Times, which was published in 2010;[20] and his second, How To Eat Out, which was published in 2012.

Coren is the editor of the dining guide Truth, Love & Clean Cutlery: A Guide to the Truly Good Restaurants and Food Experiences of the UK.[21]

On 23 July 2008, The Guardian's media blog published an email from Coren to sub-editors at The Times. Coren's internal Times email used profanity, the use of which he defends,[40] to take issue with a colleague's removal of an indefinite article (an "a") from his piece, which he believed ruined a joke in his last line. Coren said a joke was lost in the change from "a nosh" (meaning fellatio) to "nosh"—a word derived from Yiddish meaning "food", which he doubted his editors knew better than he.[41] The Daily Telegraph said the incident was "not the first time the critic has been caught out writing abusive emails to colleagues".[42] The exchange was reprinted in the American magazine Harper's in October 2008.[43]

In his next article, dated 26 July 2008, Coren said his Jewish ancestors had been persecuted by Poles. He stated that Poles used to burn Jews in synagogues for entertainment at Easter; and that Poland is in denial about its role in the Holocaust. He referred to immigrant Poles as "Polacks", arguing that "if England is not the land of milk and honey it appeared to them three or four years ago, then, frankly, they can clear off out of it".[44]

Coren's comments led to a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission,[45] an early day motion in the Parliament of the United Kingdom,[46] and a critical editorial in The Economist.[47] Coren responded: "I wrote in passing that the Poles remain in denial about their responsibility for the Holocaust. How gratifying, then, to see so many letters in The Times in the subsequent days from Poles denying their responsibility for the Holocaust."[48] He also told The Jewish Chronicle: "Fuck the Poles".[49] After the Press Complaints Commission rejected their complaint because the criticism had been of a group rather than an individual, the Federation of Poles in Great Britain (FPGB) lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights.[50]

Professor Gábor Halmai of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency said "I completely share the criticisms" of the piece made by The Economist. He said that amid an internal debate about an FRA response, a colleague had said "it is not even certain that what Coren stated with regard to his past had taken place at all". Halmai responded that while the generalisation used by Coren was unacceptable, it was protected under freedom of expression, conceding the existence of the Jedwabne, Krakow and Kielce pogroms. [51]

On 14 January 2010, Coren attracted criticism after he posted on his Twitter feed: "Next door have bought their 12-year-old son a drum kit. For fuck's sake! Do I kill him then burn it? Or do I fuck him, then kill him then burn it?" Vivienne Pattison, director of watchdog Mediawatch UK, condemned the remark as "very bad taste".[52][53] Coren later posted: "Oh hell's bells. Look, can I just say I didn't kill the kid, or have sex with him. And anyway he's not real. And I live in Vienna."[52]

On 13 May 2011, Coren attracted controversy after joking about a privacy injunction by posting on his Twitter account: "god, ANOTHER injunction tonight. another footballer. and SUCH a boring one. fucking shit midfielder... he's yet another very ugly married man who's been carrying on with a gold-digging flopsie he should have seen coming a MILE away". Then on 14 May he tweeted "Gareth Barry looks remarkably relaxed when you consider that... first touch for Gareth Barry... not according to what I've heard... time for a bet. what chance Barry to score? tiny fiver on barry to score at 22–1. wdv been nice to get a double with Giggs in the match before... Barry's been pulled off...". This was later deleted but was archived.[54][55]

On 22 May 2011, it was reported that lawyers at Schillings acting for an England footballer had persuaded the High Court judge Mr. Justice Tugendhat to ask the Attorney General for England and Wales, Dominic Grieve, to consider the criminal prosecution of "a top journalist" over a matter that breached a privacy injunction.[56] Coren acknowledged on Twitter that he could face jail for contempt of court, saying: "A funny fucking day. The support of twitter has been almost tear-jerking. But I am afraid there won't be room for all of us in the cell. xxx."[57] On 23 May 2011, Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament John Hemming spoke in the House of Commons and used parliamentary privilege to identify Coren as the person involved, leading to an immediate rebuke from Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow.[58][59] In an interview with The Sunday Times on 29 May 2011, Hemming stated that he considered naming both footballers in the Coren controversy, before the Speaker stopped him. Hemming commented that the Speaker was "probably right to do so", and added: "I couldn't be guaranteed his family didn't know, whereas Giggs' name had been chanted on the terraces."[60]

According to The Daily Telegraph, the Premier League footballer identified by Coren in the tweets was not Ryan Giggs, and was known in the privacy injunction by the pseudonym TSE.[61] The case at the High Court of Justice was TSE & ELP v News Group Newspapers Ltd, with TSE being described as "a married footballer" who had been involved in an extra-marital relationship with a woman known as ELP. Neither person had wished The Sun to publish the details of the relationship.[62] The injunction was granted on 13 May 2011 by Mr. Justice Tugendhat, who accepted claims from the footballer that publication of the details of the relationship "would provoke the cruel chants of supporters." Tugendhat said that aspects of the case had been published on "various electronic media, including Twitter", but added: "the fact that these publications have occurred does not mean that there should be no injunction in this case".[63]

In 2012, Coren responded to criticism from then Huffington Post journalist Alice Vincent by responding, "go fuck yourself, you barren old hag."[64] Vincent, 23, had said a recent column by Coren about his newborn daughter was a "yawn" and "one step up from a mumsnet blogpost."[65] Coren's response sparked accusations of misogyny and sexism.[66][67][68]

In December 2018, it was discovered that Giles Coren had an alternative Twitter account that "he once used to suggest people critical of him were motivated by antisemitism".[69] The account stated to be of a Polish plumber with a bio composed in broken English and Coren's book cover as avatar.[70]

In July 2021, following the death of the journalist Dawn Foster, Coren tweeted the following:

"When someone dies who has trolled you on Twitter, saying vile and hurtful things about you and your family, is it okay to be like, 'I am sorry for the people who loved you, and any human death diminishes me, but, HA HA HA HA HA HA'?"[71]

An earlier version of this tweet included the words, "you can fuck off on to hell now where you belong" in place of, "HA HA HA HA HA HA".[72]

Both tweets were quickly deleted but were screen-grabbed and widely shared online.[73] There was speculation that Coren was upset because of a tweet Foster had written about him that read, "Giles Coren a prime example of how the “if I’ve heard of yer da, I don’t need to hear from you” rule holds for almost every man bar Jesus."[74][75] Coren's comments stirred considerable controversy, with several figures in the media criticising him, and some calling for him to lose his jobs with The Times and Times Radio.[76] The press regulator IPSO received several complaints but took no action[77] and Coren's home in North London was daubed in graffiti paying tribute to Foster. It read: "Dawn Foster Forever".[78] Dog excrement was reportedly left at his property.[79]

In January 2022, The Times magazine published Coren's review of a new Popeyes branch in Stratford, East London. Coren wrote that "exploiters" of fried chicken recipes in chain restaurants had brought "obesity, sloth, waste, [and] high street degradation" to white communities. In the article Coren wrote:

Isn't fried chicken, in a weird way, a form of race revenge? The thrusting young economies of West Africa now must surely look at a KFC bargain bucket and high-five themselves that their ancestors had the forethought, all those years ago, to provide the means by which white culture would one day poison itself to death.[80]

The Independent's Race Correspondent, Nadine White, tweeted: "A review of the new London Popeyes restaurant in The Times. Fried chicken = Black people = sloth, waste, degradation."[81]