TRIBUTES TO AA GILL, THE CRITIC WHO WAS NOT A FAN OF WALES
TRIBUTES have been paid to AA Gill – the restaurant critic who famously once dubbed the Welsh “dark, ugly little trolls”.
The award-winning writer’s death was confirmed on yesterday afternoon, just three weeks after he revealed he had been diagnosed with “an embarrassment of cancer, the full English”.
He made the revelations after his family became concerned about the 62-year-old’s rapid weight loss.
Gill – the AA stood for Adrian Anthony – was reported to the Commission for Racial Equality for his remarks about the Welsh, which he made in his Sunday Times column.
At the time he hit back, saying he could not care less about being reported and that the Welsh said terrible things about the English without anyone complaining. He maintained he was Scottish, despite leaving there a year after being born to English parents.
Ray Singh, then in charge of the Commission for Racial Equality in Wales, said at the time his office was flooded with complaints after Gill called the Welsh “loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls.”
It was not the first time Gill had upset the Welsh.
Never a man to mince his words, he once called Rhyl “a town only a man driving a crane with a demolition ball would visit with a smile”.
And he had little time for Wales’ cuisine. “You can easily travel from Cardiff to Anglesey without ever stimulating a taste bud,” he said. He once wished his readers Merry Christmas, adding that his good wishes extended to everyone, “except, of course, the Welsh”.
Friends and colleagues on The Sunday Times were informed of the writer’s death by editor Martin Ivens, who described him as “a giant among journalists”.
Mr Ivens said in a memo to staff: “It is with profound sadness that I must tell you that our much-loved colleague Adrian Gill died this morning.
“Adrian was stoical about his illness, but the suddenness of his death has shocked us all.
“Characteristically he has had the last word, writing an outstanding article about coming to terms with his cancer in tomorrow’s Sunday Times Magazine.
“He was the heart and soul of the paper.
“His wit was incomparable, his writing was dazzling and fearless, his intelligence was matched by compassion.
“Adrian was a giant among journalists. He was also our friend. We will miss him.
“I know you will want to join me in sending condolences to Nicola Formby and his children.”
Dad-of-four Gill also used his column to announce he was to marry long-term partner Nicola, after 23 years together.
It is unknown whether he fulfilled that wish.
Financial Times editor Lionel Barber hailed him the “king of irreverent critics”. Sunday Times political editor Tim Shipman tweet- ed: “AA Gill, the writer who first made me buy the Sunday Times, the best of us for 30 years, has died.
“Very sombre mood in the office.”
Observer food critic Jay Rayner said: “He was a controversialist, sometimes outrageously so, but a kind man and a brilliant writer.”
Former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil said he was “consumed with sadness and anger” at the death of his friend.
Dyslexic Gill was known for dictating his copy over the telephone, composing his memoir Pour Me: A Life in the same fashion.
His columns were full of wit and cynicism, both feared and adored in the industry.
Gill described himself as an alcoholic who had been sober since he was 30, al- though he would drink wine at the altar when taking communion “once or twice a year”.
Gill was privately educated in Hertfordshire before he moved to London to study at the Central Saint Martins College of Art of Design and the Slade School of Art.
By his 30s he had given up his artistic aspirations and began writing “art reviews for little magazines”, working in restaurants and teaching cookery.
He went on to write his first article for Tatler, the society magazine, in 1991. He moved to the Sunday Times in 1993.
Gill leaves nine-year-old twins, Isaac (also known as Beetle) and Edith, with Ms Formby, and two grownup children from his marriage to Amber Rudd, now Home Secretary.