Most loathsome Evening Standard columnist

Gruesome

YAB ftw

Gilligan.

YAB currently, Mellor for lifetime achievement.

Feel like we're ignoring some of the up-and-coming players here. Charlotte Ross: "You know things are bad when the stylist rolls up her sleeves and washes your hair herself."

Sebastian Shakespeare lining up the techies for a logistical beatdown here:

Being a technological ingénu, I hadn't realised what I'd let myself in for. Every few hours an email lands in my in-box saying x or y or z is following me on Twitter. Of course, I have no idea who they are. Is this utility to give people the illusion of popularity? It doesn't make me feel wanted but instantly oppressed. It's social harassment.

Can't wait for the kgb to assassinate about 90 per cent of these guys.

Gilligan, Cohen - can't decide.

feel sorry for whoever has to sub will self's articles

why's that?

david sexton pisses me off, can't remember why. his byline pic, as much as anything.

anne mcevoy really is awful.

i obviously 'get' the gilligan hate, and he is one ugly mofo, but i still basically feel he did one true thing with the sexed-up dossier business.

Cohen's constant straw man building singles him out I think on balance. Gilligan is mostly just a snooze. As are a lot of these.

Greenslade is referred to as "Greenslime" in Private Eye- does anyone know why this is, apart from being a long-standing hack?

but i still basically feel he did one true thing with the sexed-up dossier business

always an unblemished bit on someone's rep

Greenslade is referred to as "Greenslime" in Private Eye- does anyone know why this is, apart from being a long-standing hack?

Er, public-schoolboy humour, as is the case with 99% of Private Eye nicknames?

Also, he is a loathsome, smug, toadying fuck, so fair play to them.

I mean, I actually despise Greenslade on some levels more than any of these other fuckers, because sitting there pontificating about the media is the absolute wanko dei wanki of column-writing, and his contribution for the past 10 years has amounted to little more than: "Gosh, aren't newspapers fucked? Ah well, had to happen. I'm great," or: "Gosh, lots of subs getting sacked? Ah well, had to happen. I'm great."

I suspected this might be the case. He is pretty self-important!

n0rman l3br3cht was a regular customer at the 2nd bookshop that i used to work in, and was easily one of the biggest cheapskate self-important nitwitted obnoxious cunts i have ever had the misfortune to deal w/

I'd have said Anne McElvoy is average rather than awful.

Davis Sexton is the new AN Wilson.

n0rman l3br3cht was a regular customer at the 2nd bookshop that i used to work in, and was easily one of the biggest cheapskate self-important nitwitted obnoxious cunts i have ever had the misfortune to deal w/

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 29 January 2009 13:06 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Anecdotes or gtfo.

Anne McElvoy is the one I always bring up as an example of how the Standard is ridiculously overloaded with columnists. Who the hell cares about what she has to say enough to read her column? I can't possibly fathom the justification for giving her a whole page. At least with some of the others you know you're going to be provoked.

how often do you guys read this paper then?

I'm going more on TV appearances, tbh, so YAB still ftw

I heard Obama speak in 2004 and thought: I've seen the new black Kennedy

io read 'the maestro myth' by lebrecht, years ago. i wouldn't read anything by him now. total arse.

i read, jupiter's moon had nothing to do with it.

Will Self must win least loathsome based on TV appearances

But then you read him...

If you don't Groksop, you are pitiful.

will self is basically A Good Thing. much better media personality than novelist, to be sure.

Will Self's (Indie?) columns where he just takes a walk and pontificates all over the gaff for 600 words are dreadful. He's a decent interviewer though, in an ideal world GQ would tell Piers Morgan to fuck off and let him do their head-to-head pieces.

in an ideal world we probably wouldn't have GQ

Will Self's (Indie?) columns where he just takes a walk and pontificates all over the gaff for 600 words are dreadful.

well duh, it's in the indie. and it's called psychogeography.

he's still better than boring hackney recycler iain sinclair, world's worst writer.

Where would you go to snap one off over pictures of Lily Allen then though?

xp

he doesn't 'take a walk'. he goes on a 'derive'. it's a vital distinction.

derive morelike deprive(d of insight)

Derives me up the wall, so he does

sinclair's bfi bk on 'crash' is v. gd ( i think i have said this before, here) but yes, his fiction is intolerable

Never really bothered to read Iain Sinclair but surely he can't be a worse novelist than Will Self?

(Nb I think Self is a good short story writer with some great ideas but he can't sustain them over the course of a whole novel).

Jenkins is great

I voted for Blackhurst

"One of the best lunches I've ever had ­— in a career of many lunches — was at Lehman Brothers. It was earlier this year, with Jeremy Isaacs, the bank's head of Europe. We sat at the top of Lehman's Canary Wharf tower in conditions of utmost splendour. The food and service was worthy of Le Gavroche. The room we were in was vast, the furnishings impeccable. I'd just come from seeing the Financial Services Authority, also in Canary Wharf." - 15 Sep 2008

Blackhust on Henry "Hank" Paulson:

As a boy, he was an Eagle Scout who wanted to be a forest ranger. A large part of the $700million fortune he accumulated at Goldman is pledged to naturalist causes. He's crazy about fishing — displaying the same determination he brings to other aspects of his life.

It's a determination Paulson, as CEO, instilled in the workforce. He would send round voicemail announcements that began "Dear all…" with his gravelly voice — it was impressive, akin to hearing Churchill during the war.

In the job, Paulson has proved his own man — promoting green issues and highlighting the gap between rich and poor, neither at the top of the prior Bush agenda.

He's also paid due heed to the US's foreign investors, acknowledging their mounting wealth and importance. It was his desire to ensure their confidence that lay behind the Fannie and Freddie takeover as much as wanting to boost the home market.

That's Hank, for whom we may all end up giving thanks.

Jesus Christ...

Also, here's Liz Hoggard, who isn't a columnist, but has based an article around Christina Hendricks without bothering to know the name of the character she plays in Mad Men

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23629962-details/Dangerous+curves+ahead/article.do

I remember the first time I saw Gay Dad. It was impressive, akin to hearing Churchill during the war.

I remember the first time I saw Gay Dad. It was impressive, akin to hearing Churchill drumming during the war.

"Ohhhhhhh Jim"

Never really bothered to read Iain Sinclair but surely he can't be a worse novelist than Will Self?

― Matt DC, Thursday, January 29, 2009 3:13 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah, i reckon he is worse; but i was overegging it a bit out of general spite for sinclair.

agree that self's best fiction is by a long way his short stories. not that i've read any in a decade now...

OK that blackhurst guy has to win. wow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

not sure whether to post this here or on i love tmi, but yasmin alibhai-brown says she peed herself under interrogation by plain-clothes police in gordon brown's jackboot britain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/video/2009/feb/04/liberty-central-yasmin-alibhai-brown

Policeman must have been working class

something in Private Eye last week about Lebedev basically having enough money left to run the Standard for about two years, and if he has to close it then he will

Is it true that Rachel Johnson yesterday reviewed her own father's biography, ending with the line "oh Dada we're all so proud of you"?

Nice of her to remember me

If she the daughter of Paul "Loonybins" Johnson?

"oh Dada and Surrealism, we're all so proud of you"?

yeah, it's true (can't find it online though:

THERE'S no point in trying to hide it. This is log-rolling of the highest order. When asked to review Stanley I Presume, my father's memoir of his life up to the age of 40, I was thrilled. My father - one of the first proper environmentalists, expert on population control, former Euro MP and one of nature's prop forwards - has had a rip-roaring life, created countless cock-ups on all four continents and writes like a dream.

[blah, blah, blah.]

There is also lots I didn't know about that I won't go into here. Moving stuff, about his parents, about his marriage. Poetry. Even feelings. So all I can say is, well done, Dada! I loved it, and we're very proud of you, too.

one of the first proper environmentalists

lol

I'm not dismissing Stanley's achievements here - just the use of "proper", to be clear (and "first" for that matter).

When asked to review Stanley I Presume, my father's memoir of his life up to the age of 40, I was thrilled

Really wanted to be taken back to the days of people submitting music reviews to me at the student paper, thanks Rach

This is such a strange thing to do.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/may/04/london-evening-standard-alexander-lebedev

I wish people would stop apologising for stuff

I wish they'd apologise for Boris.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/10/veronica-wadley-evening-standard-sorry

Lol.

"Saying 'sorry' for the past smacks of a Soviet courtroom 'confession'.

Is that her general lifestyle advice?

Wadley, who left the Standard abruptly after Lebedev bought 75.1% of the paper in January, also castigated the new regime for failing to back Boris Johnson.

Not at all Soviet like then.

New look Standard

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story_attachment.asp?storycode=43610&seq=2&type=P&c=1

the 'London' is very messy there

No Eros.

rather indy-esque

At least it now looks like a local paper.

needs a front page advert for a garden centre to complete the effect.

Same font as Thelondonpaper in the headlines, colour scheme looks kind of similar as well.

I'm glad it's free today, that means I can look through it for professional interest without having to actually buy the thing, yay.

Looking at a copy just now, it's been mostly left alone on the inside.

It looks less like Thelondonpaper in the flesh and even more like the IoS.

just picked up a copy and read the mediagraun interview with the editor. the content looks more or less the same as ever except that they seemed to have fallen for the bullshit that always comes out of focus groups, that people want "positive news". not true.

at the same time, it's pushing the line "tomorrow's news today" in its marketing as if the internet hadn't been invented. the big failure of the standard is to adapt to a world where it doesn't get first crack at the day's political stories before the nationals. was trying to think what they should do instead - maybe actually cover london properly? the local weeklies are mostly dreadful.

Sam Allardyce's sacking by Blackburn is a bit like a fat girl having a one-night stand — they should have been grateful to be there at all but now wronged, they feel worthy of better.
.........

No doubt he would do a good job because that is where he thrives. He'll be back. Fat girls rarely go without.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-sport/football/article-23907001-sam-allardyce-was-badly-treated-but-his-diet-of-football-is-hard-to-stomach.do

swear *blind* I didn't see this before I brought it up on the Prem thread not five minutes later. nakh you are either the bane of my existence or my North London doppelganger, why have we not bro'd down yet

anyway: james olley, awful man

heh, not akshly norf lahndahn tho i'm often there

just think, right now a thousand braying deutsche bank employees in ECx chain pubs are thumbing their way through copies of the evening standard to lol together at fuckin legend james olley and how he totally fuckin nails the behaviour of fat women before making chubby chaser jokes and throwing up all over their excessively shiny shoes

truly this LDN 2k11

akshly norf lahndahn - thought this was the owner of the standard for a second

true

lol ward fowler

It's OK, he can be as offensive as he likes about fat girls as he appears to be one:

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/std/siteimages/eveningstandard/columnists-2/james.olley.gif

I was akshly worried that my feverish copying of the quote in a text to my best friend would be overlooked by the lady sitting next to me and interpreted as an affirmation of Olley's ULTIMATE LAD status - but no fear; I doubt many people really thought fit to remark on it at all. Except, yes, the stubby self-hating coffer-stuffing bank grunts of the Bunch Of Grapes, chortling momentarily before perhaps undoing another shirt button and glancing sidelong at the 40something lawyer type milking it at the bar

www.onlinegooner.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=530996&sid=29671d36237db999f7d5e483632c6660

damn what a sig for the op

^^^which football manager is THIS an allegory for, 10 points to the winner (n.b. it's Gordon Strachan) xp to self

btw Fatty's Fucking Catch is one of the best moments in the history of televised sport. You'd think some things are physically impossible, but no:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnbhy321Owc

(this from a sport nakhchivan has previously described as 'corinthian')

I mean, that's about as Corinthian as a column from the Evening Standard

Fucking hell we have a straight in at #1 winner today.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-24029164-if-only-i-had-taken-norman-lamonts-advice-and-dated-david-cameron.do

Recently, I accepted a lift home one evening from a 70-year-old who had been a friend of my late uncle. He had a face like a medieval poultice for curing the plague and could barely walk the few steps to his chauffeur-driven car. Once the engine had started, however, resembling some ghastly resurrected creature from a Hammer film, he attempted to winch himself onto me using the back seat safety belt. As I told the driver to stop the car, this septuagenarian remonstrated: "But age means nothing!"

Oh? I don't want to rain on anyone's parade d'amour but I cannot jerk any tears of joy from my eyes at the increasing number of May-December relationships [when one partner is significantly older than the other] that are in the newspapers at the moment. Bryan Ferry, 66, is on his honeymoon with former PR Amanda Sheppard, 29.

Madonna, 53, looks almost beatific speaking of new beau Brahim Zaibat, who is just 24, and 69-year-old Harrison Ford and his wife Calista Flockhart, 47, have been pictured singing in the rain at a football match.

I don't play the September Song any more, for I have too long lived its unforgiving lyrics. It's a long, long way from May to December and I'm an expert. All my adult life I have been known, like the title of a Scott Fitzgerald novelette, as "the girl who likes older men".

I'm not sure how this came about but it might be because, at 22, I wrote an article saying so. In it I dismissed a whole, younger generation of males as androgynous boobies - halfwits lacking manners and chivalry, who thought the gold standard was a nightclub in Mayfair and Puccini a champagne cocktail.

I exalted the brilliance and allure of older men. Field Marshal Blucher was 72 when he helped us win the battle of Waterloo. Winston Churchill was 66 in 1940 when he became prime minister. At the time I sincerely believed in all this. To paraphrase Mae West, it's not the age of the men in your life, it's the life - or high life - in your men.

I was not, however, prepared for the consequences. Half the men in London over 40 were quickly on the phone. My new admirers were old enough to be my father's friends; sometimes they were my father's friends. Moreover, given his high profile (my father was Woodrow Wyatt, chairman of the Tote, writer and peer), they were well-connected and cultured.

I went to parties and met such figures as Margaret Thatcher, Kingsley Amis, Tom Stoppard and Norman Lamont. Lamont had some whipper-snapper working for him. I forget his name but I believe he is now Prime Minister.

I ate in restaurants that my male peers couldn't afford, enjoyed the best seats at Covent Garden and stayed in the swankiest hotels. In my twenties this was a heady brew. But no one warned me that one day I would have to pay the bill for my May-December affairs and that the bill would be a high one. Every girl should be swept off her feet by a man old enough to be her grandfather but it's different when you hit the ground only to resume a never-ending dance to the music of time.

I attended the society wedding of historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore to Santa Palmer-Tomkinson without a date. My then beau, a 55-year-old financier, was in hospital having his hip replaced. I sat in a corner with a girlfriend of mine who also had a history of dating older men. At 25 she had married a wealthy man of 54. Now, five years later, she wondered if she had made a mistake. She still hankered for nightclubs; he wanted nights in front of the box. He had two ex-wives and five children. She had agreed to forgo motherhood but now she was wretched. "Accidentally" she had become pregnant and her husband had bullied her into an abortion. (She is now divorced and childless.)

As for my own beau; reader, I didn't marry him. I was discovering that the saying "better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave" was a canard. Older men have bad habits, they are less flexible than the youth who bends with the breeze and have a Pygmalion-like desire to "mould" you. Money provides little consolation. My next boyfriend was an art collector. He was 60, deceptively sweet and had a flat in Chelsea.

As well as collecting art, he collected army uniforms. Indeed, his obsession with the military was unsettling. When we gave dinner parties for his friends (the men ogled, the women looked askance), he hired a former major as a cook. I don't know what effect he had had on recruits but he terrified me.

Whenever I mentioned children, my beloved retorted: "I have three from my ex-wife. Don't even go there. The noise would be intolerable."

Readers might argue that not all older men are so intransigent. Perhaps I have been what is called a "bad picker". Nonetheless, it is a truism that the older the man, the less likely he is to relish being awoken by a squalling child.

I was walking a different road from the men in my life and it was becoming stonier. As my girlfriends added to their families, I became depressed. It was also galling that the young men on whom I had once looked down were now dining at the Ivy, appearing at glamorous soirées and buying villas in the Mediterranean. But like an addict, I could extricate myself from an individual man but not from his age-group. Worse, as I grew older, so did the men.

Another modern myth is that the older the man, the more considerate he is in the boudoir. Often, alas, he is so considerate that you fail to notice anything has occurred. Nonetheless, elderly men are now tottering from their Zimmer frames, emboldened by Viagra. Several times I would be placed at dinner (as the girl who likes older men) next to gentlemen d'un certain âge whose jowls were so low I feared they might fall into their soup. Two of these pickled specimens announced that they used Viagra and could continue all night.

"Oh, Petronella," sighed a Spanish friend, when I complained. "Try a Continental man. They're much more chivalrous. They really know how it's done." Thus, two years ago, I became engaged to an Austrian. He was handsome and appeared about 54. At first I wondered at his lack of verve on the chaise longue. Then, four months later his doctor told me he had health problems, adding, "well, he is 65". Again, children were a behemoth. He told me he was retiring, he had no intention of having a child and planned to travel the world playing in veterans' tennis tournaments.

I don't know what hours Bryan Ferry keeps these days but even former rock stars of 66 find it hard to keep up with women in their twenties. If only I'd known it when I too was in my twenties. My first love (I was 18) was a man of 44. Then he resembled Errol Flynn. Lucky me. Now he is in a wheelchair.

Occasionally, I hear or read that former admirers are dying or even dead. This depresses me even more. So does the refusal of my friends to believe that I no longer crave a fantastic silver fox. Last week, a well-meaning couple attempted to set me up with a 67-year-old. I declined, saying I had to go abroad.

Yes, it's a darn long way from May to December and I'm too tired and fed up to play the waiting game. That is, waiting for them to die. If only. If only I had listened when Norman Lamont suggested that a young David Cameron would be more "appropriate" than my flirty old men.

It's not so much that I would be married to the PM but that I would be married with a gaggle of noisy brats. That my partner and I would have grown up and grown older together, with the same desires and concerns. I would never have had to worry about being a widow or a carer at 45. Yes, I know that May-May marriages fail, too, but the odds are better and hope is the wellspring of a relationship.

Please, please, won't someone introduce me to a man under 50? Oh, give me a guy with pecs instead of specs!

(looks at accompanying photo) you mean she's not 50+??

could maybe do with a repoll - this is just pre-Lebedev/Greig refit, does not represent its swing away from suburban rage, towards posh ppl + philanthropy.

Richard Godwin would win a new poll.

Sebastian Shakespeare is a cunt of the highest order. He's the worst kind of right-wing columnist, one who tries to pretend he isn't Tory through and through.

He's still around isn't he?

Sarah Sands is worse than Richard Godwin surely

my father was Woodrow Wyatt

This woman is actually deserving of our sympathy, tbh

Hang on, I mean Richard Dennen.

My first love (I was 18)
was a man of 44.
Then he resembled Errol Flynn.
Lucky me.
Now he is in a wheelchair.

wasn't Petronella allegedly banging Boris J at one point? don't know if Cameron wd've been a step up or down from that.

Suspect Mrs. Boris Johnson would've preferred if Petronella had gone after David Cameron and he'd been the one to knock her up

... but good old Boris, what a character!

I note that her half brother is Pericles Plantagenet Wyatt, son of Labour MP, Woodrow Wyatt and Lady Moorea Hastings, daughter of the 16th Earl of Huntingdon. Old Labour, eh?

xps

on the very-safe-to-say side of allegedly. Some grim end to that, but also:

The affair, which had been well hinted at in UK newspaper gossip columns, included passionate London taxi cab rides around St John's Wood during which they would ask the cab driver to insert cassette tapes of Wyatt singing Puccini.

only remember Woodrow as the News of the Screws' "smoking is good for you" correspondent tbh

I just think of him as something to do with the tote.

Is Richard Dennen, actually real? I always thought it was a joke?

http://onethousandreasons.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/richard-dennen.jpg

does this look like a joke to you?

http://onethousandreasons.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/richard-dennen.jpg

yes, he's real. Friend with form in Tatler-world got a bit chilly when I pointed to one of his abominations, said he's apparently 'a polite, charming young man', very handy for walking young ladies out to parties etc. felt i'd entered a world of madness tbh, & dropped it.

Wyatt, known to her friends as "Petsy," lives with her mother in St John's Wood, North London.[1]

actually pretty much everything on her wikipedia page is worthy of c+p

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/i-felt-like-james-bond-boy-13-enlists-taxi-in-chase-across-city-to-find-iphone-he-left-on-bus-10110783.html

Feel like we need some sort of repository of Evening Standard splashes about Kensington nonentities doing totally unremarkable things.

When he got off at Chelsea Town Hall with his nanny

Mrs Skepper, a friend of Prince Andrew’s, was famous for starring in the Cadbury’s Flake adverts of the Eighties.

“It was such an amazing turn of events with everyone rallying together showing a great example of community spirit.”

I enjoy the lengthy interviews with arbtrary aristos who haven't really done anything. Slightly desperate air to them, especially when they're filling a column or two with a list of their relatives, ancestors and any royals they've met. (Tho' the best ones are a bit more substantially odd, eg Lady Neidpath)

like the newspaper of an occupying army, as some breh on facebook said.

we should poll the worst thing about it

narrow it down to its feelgood campaigns about homelesses or excons having the chance to become entrepreneurs or its coverage of chelsea fc

all of this is based on seeing other people reading it on the tube obviously as I have better things to do than pick it up, like pick my nails, play angry birds or read ilm

The kid has really perfected that look of plutocratic narcissism at an impressively young age. It's the dead-eyed look in his eyes, he looks like he's just disemboweled a rat with the pointy bit of a school compass, just for the hell of it.

maybe that's why there's a weightless unreal air to Rosamund Urwin in there - pumping out trad guardian opinions in a world of oligarch building news, patrician charity and Cara speculation.

I've only just read the actual story linked. Nails the details, good job standard - 'recently broken his arm in a skiing accident', 'where fees are £5,600 a term'

a 50 minute chase and the bus has moved all of 800 metres from the start point

Looks like the dozy brat needs tuition

(also, clearly not so much of a plutocrat kid as he takes the bus rather than be ferried everywhere by some put-upon flunky)

Rosamund Urwin was at Westminster, home of super-privileged Guardian opinions

Charles Saatchi's weekly column is the most boggling, can't believe it still continues.

I will add that I have definitely taught at least one of his classmates

not Saatchi's, although his son was at school with me

lol u went private skool

lol!

You forgot angry articles about basement extensions in Chelsea, an issue that virtually no one in London cares about, seemingly every other day. It's the perfect example of the bizarre world their editors live in.

Angry articles about basement extensions in Primrose Hill/Hampstead also feature in the Camden New Journal tbf...

Pictures of Evgeny Lebedev are never not funny though

I used to do occasional shifts on the Standard's Going Out pages, and remember much consternation among the staff after Max Hasting's retired as editor, and his replacement mandated a string of front page stories about rich people having their rolexes snatched from their wrists while driving about Kensington.

also to be taken into consideration incessant cross-media plugging of london live, a channel that seems to consist entirely of four year old episodes of made in chelsea and eight year old episodes of peep show.

http://www.tatler.com/bystander/events/2014/december/teen-tatler-bystander-ball#!/15810/image/24

if you hear something late at night some kind of trouble some kind of fight just don't ask me what it was

that bbc 3-part tatler documentary was good at the current version of this class. it was basically uncritical, but mapped it decently.

As I said on a popular social media network yesterday, I did the same thing.

It was our Amber's iphone, a local bus, me driving along the bus route, caught it eventually, and made her go and ask the driver for it. We had already called the number, first time it rang, after that it had gone to voicemail. Anyway, all ended well. We did not contact the Reading Chronicle. Mind you, each time our Amb caught the bus she'd invariably get that driver who would be all "got your phone lol"..