Who The Hell Is A.A.Gill?

Over the last three weeks there has been a wonderful series of programmes entitled "Meet The Romans" on the BBC. It was hosted by the delightfully eccentric and very English lady Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College and the Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Well versed in her subject, she offered a view of ancient Rome that was informative, entertaining and wonderfully presented. For her pains, however, she was subjected to a series of insults from A.A.Gill, the restaurant reviewer for the "Sunday Times," who suggested that Mary Beard was "too ugly for television" and that she “should be kept away from the cameras altogether." Disgusted by such an unwarrented attack on this highly intelligent and obviously warm human being, "The News In Shorts" did a little research on her assailant. Adrian Anthony Gill studied art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and the Slade School of Art, and failed utterly in his ambition to become a real artist because he had no talent. He was the companion who managed to get both himself and Joan Collins ejected from a Gordon Ramsey restaurant after "personal attacks" and insulting staff. He once described the Welsh as "loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls" for which he was reported to the Commission for Racial Equality. Born in Scotland he also described the English as "embarrassing" and an "ugly race" as well as a "lumpen and louty, coarse, unsubtle, beady-eyed, beefy-bummed herd". In October 2009 he claimed to have shot a baboon because he wanted to know "what it might be like to kill someone". In September 2010, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) made a formal judgement against Gill for referring to the sexuality of the BBC Sport presenter Clare Balding in "a demeaning and gratuitous way," while he has been the subject of 62 PCC complaints in the last five years. In other words he's an ill-educated lout with absolutely no charm, talent or ability whatsoever and should soon, if there's any justice in the world, be on the dole queue.