YouSaid · the spoken record

A. A. Gill

lines on the record: 33
first: 2006-08-20
most recent: 2006-08-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

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2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Robeson and love song from the 1935 film Sanders of the River, if you could only take one of those eight records, Adrian.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Come on, should not you just stop trying so hard and stop being quite so clever, stop getting people's goats in the way that you do, and actually get down to it and write a serious piece of something? Wouldn't you like to do that actually”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you are at pains to write it originally, as we say, avoid the cliches to hone it, to make it clever to literally. Yes, quite. But that same reviewer, and it was Simon Heffer, in fact, wrote this, and what do you think of this? He says that if he was he thinks you should drop the clever bastardry, give up the exhausting effort to find the ultra smart phrase, and consider something more serious as a showcase for his undeniable talent, so there we are. But there's something in that, isn't there?”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's more than grumpy old man stuff, isn't it? It's stuff that really gets you going. I mean, there is a kind of, and that's why you can do the wit and be cruel with it.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Birds and turn, turn, turn you wrote a book recently, Adrian called the Angry Island, the thesis of which was that the default setting of we English was anger. I noticed that one reviewer suggested it was more about you than the English per se, that your anger about the class system or public schools or the way we speak, and we've heard a bit of it this morning. I mean, do you think of yourself as an angry man?”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he and your mother had a double burden to bear, as it were, didn't they, because not only did they have you drunk for all those years, but also their other son, your younger brother Nick, who won the Michelin star. Sort of just decided to disappear some years ago, didn't he?”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But he would have suffered terribly in all those years what twelve, thirteen years of you being completely out of it. But he lived, he died about six months ago, didn't he? But he did live to see you win these awarding critic of the year and columnist of the year and all the rest of it. So he would have been very proud.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You started writing for the Sunday Times in the nineteen nineties first table talk and then the television column. All of this though would have impressed your father, wouldn't it? Because you end up writing about the medium that he excelled in. Did it bring you back together again?”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's Naina and Neunsisch Luft Ballons, ninety nine red balloons, which you say is on your computer and comes up with enormous regularity.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is presumably why it's in the first person so it's very immediate and you hear it and you can hear if a sentence is lumpy or lacking release. Yes.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As we said, not that you could spell or anybody could read what you've written. So what did you do? You wrote it and then dictated it. Down the phone to a copy to your”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hope and common people. So all this time, Adrian, you purported to be an artist, you were doing some painting and so on and illustrating. But then you metamorphosed into a writer and a very good one from the off. You said you kind of emerged fully formed. It was Tatler in the end, wasn't it, who actually? And I know there was a little bit before that, but it was someone on Tatler who said you can write”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you meet a GP who tells you you're an alcoholic, as you say one in a long line, but suddenly this does it for you. What did he say that made him? That bloody tell you you're gonna die if you didn't stop?”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But this is accompanied by, as we understand, the misery waking up in the morning crying, because in those moments you know, or you sort of have a glimpse of the depraved existence that you're living, do you?”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Squeeze and cool for cats, that's from 1979. You say, Adrian Gill, that there are two kinds of drunk. There's the binge drinker and the topper rupper, and you were the latter, the topper upper. So presumably a lot of people never knew you were drunk. They just thought it was Adrian.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should you admit this? I should It would be hilarious though if it weren't so grim, because I gather one of the female start born stars objected to your script on religious grounds.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You fetched up in America at one point drinking moonshine. I don't know whether I'm conflating two stories here, but drinking moonshine and directing porn movies. Is that right?”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This took place at Art Colleges various Martin's to start with and the Slade later and various kind of fetid squats in and around London.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Farlow and out of time. You are a man of contradictions, though, Adrian. I think you've said yourself, you know, you're a food writer who can't drink and a dyslexic who's a brighter. Here's another one. You know, you set out, you've left school with very little to show for it, as you said, and you set out on kind of whatever it was, really, I don't think you know, do you twelve, thirteen years of drink drugs and misery, self loathing. Yeah, I must say that the thing...”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you had another problem, didn't you, which was that although you were obviously very articulate and bright, I mean articulate when you weren't stammering, you knew what you thought, you didn't score well at school.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you say they were very modern, almost determinedly modern, is what you've suggested. It was progressive. They wanted to know what you thought. They would encourage you to debate with them. Yes.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kathleen Ferrier and blow the wind southerly, and memories of your childhood in Stanmore, North London end of the tube line He also was obviously a rather cultivated family. Your father, Michael Gill, started in journalism and became a filmmaker. In fact, he made the great landmark series, Kenneth Clark Civilization, didn't he? What was life like at home with the Gills? Was it intellectually stimulating?”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow the Wind Suddenly. This reminds me incredibly strongly of Edinburgh and my grandmother and my aunt Netta. They went together and my mother, who would all sang and all sang quite operatically and would all sing at me to me at the drop of a hat, often while dropping me off at school or on buses, or I mean, I remember just being cripplingly embarrassed by my family singing all the time. But this is one of the things she'd have sung.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I had no money, and I realized that an enormous amount of my social security was going on food that I would then throw up. And I could have been spending it on beer and whiskey. And I used to drink with a butcher. And I go to him and say, is there anything you're throwing away that I can have an ego? Fancy a pig's ear. And I'd go back and find a cookbook from Oxfam and learn how to do. Pigs ears are actually particularly discussing because you have to clean them first. And with a QTIT, they're very like human ears. You need that olive oil from the chemist. Record number two.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, it was very, very simple. And if you wanted to learn to play tennis, you wouldn't buy a book on how to play tennis and read that and then take notes. I mean, you'd get a racket and a ball and you'd knock a ball about. And I think that's how you learn how to cook. And you even cooked a tennis. I mean, not by knocking a ball of music. You even cooked, didn't you, when you were drunk? Oh, no, I mean, that was how I learned how to cook. I taught myself.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mediterranean food. It has a list of people in the back who will sell you garlic. But your mother was all a good cook. My mother was, yes, she is and she still is. Yes, she is quite a good cook, but she liked all of those things And then my brother, Nick, just at the age of 13, just said, that's it, I'm going to be a cook. And your brother went on to earn a Michelin star. You earned a living at one point giving cookery lessons. To whom and how? Yes, I taught cooking in my kitchen. But no recipes. You never taught them anything specific. I wouldn't let anyone write anything down.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jomre singing in Francois Truffo's nineteen sixty two film Jules Jim. You obviously have a soft spot for things Adrian because you can wax lyrical about a French breakfast and a baget and a dish of coffee. And when you began writing, food was very high on the agenda. Has your palate always been important to you? Yes, up to a point I didn't come from a fantastically foody family but food was important because I suppose we were coming out of a time when there was so little of it. I was born in the year rationing stopped. 54 And there was still that terrible English thing of buying food for quantity rather than quality. And olive oil only in chemists to soften. Olive oil? Exactly. And if you look at Elizabeth David's neighborhood grit,”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they have some intimation of what it's like to be alcoholic, and it's a completely different thing. Hangover is actually, funny enough, one of the things that tend to go. You don't get anymore. What it's mostly about is fantastic depression and amazing boredom. This terrible, terrible, self-pitying hopelessness. Cheer us up This is from Gule Jim, the song from Guleme, which reminds me so strongly of my parents and being little in the 60s. And I've had it in my head. One of those songs in my that's been in my head all my life. And mostly songs that are in your head are really annoying. And this one I'm really pleased is just lovely.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I decided that I was going to have to stop drinking and I'd had a doctor who told me I was an alcoholic and he said now you should go to one of these new treatment centres and then I got on a train with my dad. And we had two bottles of vintage champagne, which we drank on the train dan, Wiltshire. And that was my last drink. And your first drink, do you remember that as clearly I remember I remember the sort of the first drinks that were important. I mean, drink and to a certain extent drugs. I mean, my generation tended to do, you know, we did everything. It starts off as being the key to everything and it ends up being the jailer. People who've had a hangover and been drunk.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yeah, I mean, there is a really strong sense of having been given a second chance. I mean, I still have a feeling that I'm going to wake up one when there's going to be a recording angel at the end of the bed saying, look, I'm terribly sorry, but there's been an awful mistake. You've been given someone else's life. You can have it gratis, but I'm afraid you're going to have to have your old one back. I presume you remember your last drink and the precise date of it. April 1st, yes, and I was 30 and I. What year was that? I'm really bad with years. I don't know what dates are. I was 30 whenever it was. 1985, 84? Something like that. Mid-80s anyway. April the 1st. What was the drink? April 1st.”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why I drank, I'm much more interested in how I avoid drinking again. I mean, I think what it is that makes drunks drunks is interesting in an academic sense. It's not terribly useful if that's your problem. And the way you avoid drinking again is to remind yourself about how awful it was when you were drinking, is it? Yes, but the further away you get from that, the harder it is. I mean, I can't conjure up as graphically as I used to be able to. Oh, I don't know. You've written some strong. We'll come to it anyway. But is it as if you've had two lives, you know, the life until you were 30 and the life this award-winning life successful life since?”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My castaway this week is a writer for the last 20 years or so he's entertained the middle classes with his witty newspaper columns on food, television, travel and many other things besides acerbic and astute, he's also capable of turning his hand to serious stuff, and he's written a couple of novels too. Life before this award winning career was a rather different story until the age of thirty he drifted around London and sometimes America in an aimless alcoholic existence. But he turned all that around to become the celebrated columnist he is today. There's a feeling he says that the rest of the world has a script that I wasn't given, a way of behaving that I wasn't told about he is A Gill. Is that if you'll forgive me, Adrian, the sort of the words of a recovering alcoholic and looking for another excuse? What I am a recovering alcoholic Yes, I don't think I do look for excuses. I'm not terribly interested in”
2006-08-20 · Desert Island Discs · A A Gill · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source