Giles Coren
Giles Coren (born
1969 in
Paddington,
London) is a
British journalist and broadcaster. He is host of "Movie Lounge" on Britain's
Channel 5, and restaurant critic for the British newspaper
The Times, winning the title "Food And Drink Writer of the Year" in
2005.
He is the son of the British writer and humourist
Alan Coren, and the brother of journalist
Victoria Coren. Giles is mentioned in his father's work as being a particularly 'evil child', as Alan Coren describes him trying to kill a cat. He was educated at
Westminster School before going on to
Keble College, Oxford, where he achieved a first in English.
He also contributes an irregular and irreverent column to
The Times, ranging from curious events in his personal life to political satire. Under the pseudonym Professor Gideon Carter he writes
The Intellectual's Guide to Fashion in
The Sunday Times, satirizing the pretensions of modern critical theory and cultural commentary. He ghost-wrote the autobiography of
James Dyson, inventor of the famous vacuum cleaner, and has recently sold his first
novel,
Winkler.
Coren writes unorthodox reviews that are sometimes surprising in a paper owned by the conservative
Rupert Murdoch: 'Food: 0; Just bloody being there: 7'. When asked. 'In your opinion, who is the most influential chef of our time?', Coren replied, '
Ronald McDonald, the poisonous criminal bastard.'
In the autumn of 2005, Coren appeared as a regular correspondent on
Gordon Ramsay's The F-Word. In 2005, Coren's novel "Winkler" won the
Bad Sex in Fiction Award for the most inappropriate description of
sex. The passage he was awarded for ended with the sentence fragment "Like Zorro" which seems to be gaining a status as an internet
meme. He is the host of the program Film Review on
Channel 4.
On the 6th of June, 2006, he presented a programme on the digital channel
More4, entitled
Tax the Fat, a semi-serious look at the cost of clinical obesity and the cost it presents to the
NHS.
*
Giles Coren Times Online*
Giles Coren (Byliner: Writers)*
BBC article on Coren's winning the Bad Sex in Fiction Award
