Giles Coren and his Ra-Ra skirt that swishes about in the breeze.

50 sHaDeS oF iDiOcY: pArT 3

Do you know who I've got a bit of a soft spot for?

That Victoria Coren, off of the telly. You know the one I mean?

She recently married QI favourite and comical clever clogs David Mitchell from Peep Show.

For the purposes of this article however, it would seem improper to refer to her on the basis of the dude she's hooked up with - this is merely the underpinning of a far more interesting personality.

You may have been seduced by Ms Coren's mellifluous tones randomly emanating via your speakers from the studios of Radio 4 hosting the talk show Heresy?

There are also the books she writes, the columns she pens and the TV shows she presents.

She's appeared as a guest on You Have Been Watching, Have I Got News For You and Question Time, among loads of other satirical or 'highbrow' shows and she's really funny.

Okay, I'll admit it, I quite fancy her. There's something about her playful smile, compounded by a razor-sharp wit that gets me going. She apparently has a kind of Usain Bolt Deluxe model brain where the electrical impulses zip along the craggy synapses of her cerebral cortex in a speedier fashion than self-styled 'skyfisherman' Jose Escamilla's Rods from the crazy pseudoscience universe of cryptozoology.

Victoria also plays poker. Professionally.

In September 2006, she won the main event of the European Poker Tour in London, scooping a not-to-be-sniffed-at £500,000 after defeating Australian Emad Tahtouh. In November 2011, she finished in second place at the International Federation of Poker's inaugural Table World Championship after losing a heads-up to Spaniard Raul Mestre. For this achievement, she collected $100,000, ($10,000 of which she donated to Age UK).

Somehow she also manages to industriously shoehorn the writing of a weekly column for The Observer and the fronting of BBC Four quiz show Only Connect into her schedule. Damn you Mitchell, she is actually amazing.

I suppose, in some ways, Victoria Coren is something of a femme fatale - a highly intelligent and attractive female. A feminist who can more than hold her own in the daunting intellectual company of the likes of Stephen Fry, Charlie Brooker or David Dimbleby.

She does however harbour something of a dark and most sinister of secrets...

The kind of shocking, shameful, cupboard-dwelling skeleton that occasionally reveals itself to the horror of onlookers. 

And it appears in the shape of a proper boneyfied nitwit.

This closet-creature goes by the name of Giles and it happens to be Ms Coren's big brother.

A stigma-stained sibling of the sort of indescribable entity that H.P. Lovecraft might have dreamt up in one of his 'weird fiction' Gothic horror novels. The kind of impalpable monstrosity that dwells amid the pages, shackled to a beam in the abandoned attic of a dilapidated house.

A gelatin; a slime, yet with shape. A thousand unnameable embodiments of terror. Wretched and beyond all memory or contrivance. With horns. And hooves, cloven.

And, unfortunately, he's also got a laptop.

As it goes, Giles Coren also happens to be a columnist, although his media outlet comes in the far-scarier shape of the MailOnline - a truly hideous manifestation of evil way beyond the imaginings of Victorian horror writers of the like of Lovecraft, Machen or Poe, though his opinions do have something of the 1800s about them.

On the back of the Richard Keys/Andy Gray furore regarding sexism in football, a particularly insightful piece was written by Mr Coren for the Daily Mail entitled:

So why is it all right for women to be sexist about MEN?

It's good that he used those upper-case letters for the word 'men' otherwise I might have overlooked the immediacy of this issue.

You see, according to Giles, the world is all topsy-turvy when it comes to sexism and it's about time we flipped the playing field upside its own stupid head. So, what are his contentions?

Over to Mr Coren:

"You shouldn’t pass unflattering remarks about women behind their backs because it is not a well brought-up thing to do. I would never do it myself. Not because I am a feminist, but because I am a gentleman."

An admirable stance, I think we'd all admit? Apart from the er.. hey, come on, you've got to start an article somewhere so give him the benefit of the doubt:

"To be a man in this country is constantly to have to apologise for oneself and to be ever so careful about every sentence we speak or write which contains any reference at all to members of the opposite sex. At the same time, we ourselves are fair game for women. While sexism from men is the outstanding social crime of the modern world, women can say absolutely whatever they like about us. Make no mistake, sexism is alive and well in this country and applauded in all quarters — as long as it is practised by women. And they are allowed to say the most terrible, terrible things."

..............................

Apologies for the pause, I just needed to clamber back onto my chair from the carpet. He sounds like he might cry. I think I might join him.

Buggering arse-barnacles - my blubbing is making the ink blot across the screen. Hope it's not too blurry to read.

With good faith, the only factually incorrect part of Coren's opening paragraph are all of the words that he's written. Apart from that, it's a perfectly typical passage of hyperbole from the Daily Mail's bottomless gorge of guff.

You have to be careful about every sentence spoken or written? 

That's pretty much the same line that Bruce Forsythe frothed in Anton Du Beke's defence after he 'slipped-up' and called dance partner Laila Rouass a Paki on Strictly Come Dancing. It's also much the same line that Jimmy Hill volunteered in defence of Ron Atkinson following his post-match analysis of Marcel Desailley's Champions League performance (broadcast around the world) where he described the then-Chelsea captain as "a fucking lazy, thick nigger."

The thing is, most enlightened members of our 21st century masses don't actually 'have to be careful about what they say' whatsoever because it just wouldn't enter their noodle to burble antiquated, offensive bullshit like a circa '73 'Chubby' Brown with terminal Tourette's. Most people can function perfectly capably without the aid of a political-correctness advisor. 

If you're addressing your Asian dance partner as a Paki (to her bewildered face) or describing a World Cup winning captain (who happens to be black) as a nigger, it's very simple - you're a bigoted cunt. A fucking plum. End of story.

The worrying thing about Giles Coren is that he doesn't need these things pointing out to him. That his comments are offensive and inflammatory is something that he's surely only too aware of. He feels that the rest of us have got it wrong and should accept his reasoning. Either that, or he's just taking the piss.

And once he gets on a roll, the results are spectacular, sinister and staggering:

"The great lie. All men want is sex. Not so. If anything, it is women who think only of having it off. Girls on average lose their virginity much younger than boys and have more sexual partners in youth."

In fairness to Coren, he backs these 'facts' up with absolutely no statistical evidence whatsoever. Well he couldn't - he made them up.

Then brutally, aggressively and possibly with a petty, small minded venality he goes on to state that: "Women are far meaner, more brutal, aggressive, small-minded, jealous, petty and venal than any man." And it's hard to argue with that.  

Without doubt, the funniest proclamation issued forth by Littlejohn's understudy regards our health and well-being, particularly 'man flu':

"It is women who make a big fuss about mild discomfort, not men. I have never had so much as a cold in my life, nor claimed to. I even suspect sometimes that the whole palaver about the pain of childbirth is a conspiracy to ride roughshod over men."

Proscribing to the same factual databank as Mr Coren, I can emphatically state that even Iron Man once suffered from a bout of mild nasopharyngitis - his GP told me. He was mates with my uncle and he ain't no bullshitter. He ain't. Fuck you, he ain't, well ring him then, go on, ring him. RING HIM!

Exactly.

Never once has Giles Coren had a cold. The 'childbirth palaver' is purely fiction. Seeriasss guv. Get a grip blud. Pffft.

His sister is amazing though, no lie - fuck's sake bruv, believe.

Coren finishes his piece by equating the unfair male disposition regarding women with:

"If that's not off-side, I don't know what is." 

And he's right. He doesn't know what off-side is.

According to Sky Sports' Soccer AM's Helen Chamberlain:

"The off-side rule aims to prevent strikers from scoring easy goals by lurking around the opposition's goal post. Players are forbidden from standing between the opposition post and the last opposition defender unless the ball is kicked forward towards the goalposts."

Simples. *Squeak
 

Oh Stop Being Such a Girl

50 sHaDeS oF iDiOcY: pArT 1

During the recent sexism furore that engulfed the media (kicked off by Sky Sports presenters Andy 'Arrows' Gray and Richard 'Course-They-Don’t' Keys’ odious confab that was erroneously aired), I clicked on a related link from my feminist sister Lynsey that left me genuinely aghast. The link led to an article that was published on the MailOnline website, penned by a certain Giles Coren, (no, I'd never heard of him either) entitled: 

‘So why is it all right for women to be sexist about MEN?’ 

And by all accounts, it is a frankly jaw-dropping piece of slanderous misogyny, brimming over with boiling hate. This bogus, scurrilous scribble is both indefensible and utterly pathetic in its entirety. But we'll return to Master Coren and his whining, insignificant, baseless-bellyacher opinions after the half-time oranges...

Firstly, let’s tackle Messrs. Keys and Gray and their witless assumption that the microphones were turned off before launching into a tirade of childish jibes directed at assistant referee Sian Massey, regarding the critical flaw in her character needed for accurately translating the footy rulebook into Premiership flag-waving reality...

She's female. A girl. With their stupid, befuddled XX chromosomes. 

Evidently her male counterparts are currently doing something of a Sterling job; faultlessly executed week in, week out, as they like to say. Seriously, when was the last time you heard Alex Ferguson or Arsing Whinger beefing-on about bad refereeing decisions following a game? How often does the post-match analysis burble endlessly away about how the result hinged on a couple of controversial decisions made by the male officials? And how regularly does the topic of introducing video evidence into the sport ever crop up? Erm, well…

Lovely day isn’t it? Looks like the weather’s finally on the turn... Sorry, what were you saying?

The exchanges between this pair of old-fangled obsoletes occurred before Ms Massey had even trotted anywhere near the touchline at Molineux for the Wolves/Liverpool match. I expect it came as something of a shock that this hackneyed, meat-and-potato-brained  double act were exposed, not as the impartial, philosophical philanthropists (with Zen enlightenment gleaned from their studies in the East) that you’d assumed they were? 

Egad! They had me hornswoggled too. Just how naive are we? What with their mud-caked rearing on 1970s/‘80s footy, soccer, football, cabbage kicking, pigskin punting and um, Breakfast Television? Possibly not the ideal ingredients for engineering the 21st century Renaissance man, I accept. But never did I conceive of the intolerance concealed behind the wide-eyed grin of a soft-focus Andy Gray, mullet tossed resplendently over his Villa-striped shoulders, in Panini’s Football ‘86 sticker album. My horror was palpable as I discovered the bombshell of the bullheadedness, seated-deep that belied the steely-jawed yet insipid, expressionless gawk of Richard Keys - his matted hair sprouting coarsely, but proud from under his cuffs and into his coffee mug - as he jostled with the banalities of marmalade festivals or feminine hygiene products with Wincey Willis at dawn, like the hybrid of an Easter Island Moai statue and Teen Wolf's unsavoury uncle. (Although regular daily doses of Willis is possibly enough to make a very hairy man indeed take leave of his senses). 

The scandal permeated an excited media for days on end as they always do and we were invited to stare, slack-jawed at the newly-exposed dark heart of institutionalised chauvinism that beats, bigotedly unabashed, just below the seedy, bloated underbelly of the Beautiful Game.

The disparaging remarks made by the pair were damning. Enrolling for evening classes entitled, ‘A Beginners Guide to Achieving Sexism in the Workplace,’ where the lessons are taught in a fusty old changing room with fluted circular-stud-indented, crusty chunks of earth under the rickety desks, the tutor would undoubtedly include the majority of Keys and Gray’s pearls of wisdom for the eager students. It was a veritable magic-marker, whiteboard-squeaking master class. Pure textbook:

Section 1

a)   Always commence proceedings with arrogant superiority: 'Somebody better get down there and explain offside to her.’ Check.

b)   Follow up with sweeping generalisations: 'Women don’t know the offside rule.’  Check.

c)   It is imperative to demean the subject with dismissive aplomb: 'Of course they don’t.’ Check.

d)   Insist that these tawdry inferiors will have all their frailties laid bare, paying absolutely no heed whatsoever to the actual subsequent events: 'There’ll be a big one today (bad line call). Kenny’ll go potty.’ Check  

e)   Always add a dash of derogatory terminology while referring to your quarry: 'Hear Karren Brady this morning, complaining about sexism? Do me a favour love.’ Cheeyeckk! 

cLaNg!

And so on, et cetera, et al, continued the, ‘To you, to me, to you,’ blah blah blah, toing and froing whatnots of this particular chucklesome exchange. And then things got worse for them. Much worse.

Further cringe-inducing episodes of boys' bravado batty-chunter from the hapless pair ensued and these were even more excruciating and potentially career-curtailing than the initial exposé. Their analysis of the 1998 Women’s FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Croydon emerged, which essentially involved the pair laughing their arses off throughout its duration. Now, ‘scuse my common turnstile parlance here, but to be fair, I defy any footy fan to watch the highlights of that game and not guffaw themselves giddy. It begs the question, just what was the quality like in the earlier rounds? Clearly Women’s (and Girls’) football have come a long way since those heady-days. And so followed further ‘exclusives’, including one piece of footage that showed Andy Gray suggestively urging the unimpressed Sky presenter Charlotte Jackson to: 

‘Tuck this down here for me, love,’ as he lewdly gestures towards the microphone pack down the noticeably-roomy front of his trousers. 

This proved to be Gray’s undoing and he was sent off for an early bath. Two yellow cards resulting in a red from Sky Sports.

Keys’ own personal public humiliation was about to be screened for the masses and will no doubt haunt him well into the next life. Pre-match footage unearthed from the Stamford Bridge studio saw our hirsute charmer probing the clearly-uncomfortable co-presenter Jamie Redknapp about his sexual exploits with an ex-girlfriend. In the most vulgar of terms: 

‘Did you smash it? Mind you, that’s a stupid question. If you were anywhere near it, you definitely smashed it.’ He ain’t quite done yet: 

‘You could go round there any night and find Redknapp hanging out of the back of it.’ 

It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it… 

I’ve been pondering as to whether a youthful Mr and ‘It’ Keys consummated their wedding night with him poetically thumbing-in a softy before hanging out of the back of it by romantic candlelight? Let’s hope so. 

I say it’ll haunt him, if only for the number of times his daughter Jenny presumably has to put up with some jokester declaring, ‘I’d smash it,’ referring to her. 

Keys unceremoniously punted himself into touch and resigned before being given the boot. So what next? Years of penance in the wilderness for the jingoistic jackasses you might presume?

Not a jot of it. 

TalkSport announced it had scored a sensational coup by snapping up the two presenters just days after they had to start scrawling lies into their Job Seeker’s Looking For Work Diary. The radio station has emphatically, albeit tacitly declared, we don’t really give a shit what anyone thinks and we have no intention of justifying our position because it’s already been made pretty goddamn clear. Here are two gentlemen that fully comprehend all the nuances of multi-faceted pieces of football legislation such as the offside rule and also have a very clear acumen as to what has always made this hierarchy function. Now click the kettle on sugar lips, that bloody brew’s not going to make itself.

TalkSport may as well have released this as a viral video:

[The camera pulls back to reveal the moment of elation as Keys and Gray are giving each other a high-ten, amid and above the sweaty Eiffel-Towering of a doubly-penetrated Gaby Logan. Camera switches to a slowly panning close-up of her glistening face just seconds before her head inexplicably splits in two and disturbingly reveals that her brain is actually fashioned from a six-wing carbon-latex bladder, encased in micro-textured, hand-stitched hexagonal panels of Thermoplastic Polyurethane.] © 2011 TalkSport *Sort of

It’s difficult to even criticise them for their controversial standpoint. I mean, if the woman who was recently caught on CCTV tossing a cat into a wheelie bin had actually replied to the repeated question from the press: 

‘But why did you do it?’

And responded with, ‘Because it couldn’t open the bin lid itself,’ there would have been no further questions needed your honour. The sour-faced ogress is simply just a twat who really fucking hates cats. That’s fair enough in her world. You can’t really argue with a clarification of position like that. An unrepentant TalkSport are as bold as baboons and all set for the antiquated future. 

Now…

(Sharp intake of breath). 

Giles Coren. Just where the fuck do you start with this piec-?

PPPPHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!