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'I have never ended on an unstressed syllable!'

This article is more than 15 years old
This week a furious and foul-mouthed email from the Times' restaurant critic Giles Coren to the paper's subeditors went viral. And it isn't the first time. Laura Barton introduces a choice selection

Amid all the kerfuffle over Canoe Wife, the credit crunch and Karadzic, it could be that you missed this week's most entertaining story; that of an irate email from Giles Coren, restaurant critic for the Times, to the newspaper's subeditors, leaked in all its wonderfully expletive glory. This was not the first of Coren's mails to unexpectedly see the light of day: previous outbursts have included a chastening missive to Feargus O'Sullivan, restaurant critic at the London Paper, and an exasperated tirade over the subediting of a book review.

"I'm more well-known for these emails than for anything else I've done," says Coren, somewhat sheepishly, adding that he has in a number of hours received more than 20 supportive emails from newspaper writers, including Mike Atherton, and been abused in the street by a member of the public. "So it's a mixed response," he says.

Coren admits that he sent another angry email recently, but it was intercepted by his editor, who gave him a stern telling-off. "People say 'Why don't you moderate your tone?'" he muses.

For those not familiar with the newspaper editing process, it works a little like this: a writer files an article to an editor, who then passes it to a subeditor, who sets it out on the page, cuts the words to fit, checks for spelling and grammatical errors, wanton cursing and factual inaccuracies.

There is, it must be said, something of a long-standing tension between writers and subeditors. We writers are rather protective of our words, prone to filing late and flouncing about and are altogether a tad precious. In short, subeditors view us as the Little Lord Fauntleroys of the office, and we in turn view them as our evil nemeses, hellbent on our undoing.

So while half of Fleet Street undoubtedly thought Coren a proper wazzock for his outpouring this week, there were at least some of us who sympathised somewhat. Most of us, at one point or another, have mentally drafted what we shall henceforth refer to as a "Corenian" letter, but never quite found the chutzpah required to actually send it. So today Giles, on behalf of your fellow hacks, we'd just like to say thanks, buddy - you've taken one for the team.

The offending emails

To: the Times subeditors

From: Coren, Giles

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off ... I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do ... It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh." It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking, "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best."

Well, you fucking don't. This was shit, shit subediting for three reasons.

1) "Nosh", as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German "naschen". It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, "nosh" means simply "food". You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the "a". I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, "nosh" means "a session of eating" ...

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y. I have used the word "gaily" as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed "a" so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing ... And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right, Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.

All the best

Giles

To: the Times subeditors

From: Coren, Giles

Sent: August 10 2002 16.41

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. how fucking difficult is that? it's the sentence that bestrides the fucking book i reviewed for you. it is the sentence i wrote first in my fucking review. it is 35 fucking letters long, which is why i wrote that it was. and so some useless cunt subeditor decides to change it to "jumps over A lazy dog" can you fucking count? can you see that that makes it a 33 letter sentence? so it looks as if i can't count, and the cunting author of the book, poor mr dunn, cannot count. the whole bastard book turns on the sentence being as i fucking wrote it. and that it is exactly 33 letters long. why do you meddle. what do you think you achieve with that kind of dumb-witted smart-arsery? why do you change things you do not understand without consulting. why do you believe you know best when you know fuck all. jack shit.

that is as bad as editing can be. fuck, i hope you're proud. it will be small relief for the author that nobody reads your poxy magazine.

never ever ask me to write something for you. and don't pay me. i'd rather take £400 quid for assassinating a crack whore's only child in a revenge killing for a busted drug deal - my integrity would be less compromised.

jesus fucking wept i don't know what else to say.

To: the London Paper's restaurant critic

From: Coren, Giles

Sent: 09 July 2008 23:06

feargus,

I'm emailing to say that your review of osteria emilia, in most ways perfectly fine and good and spot on, pissed me off. i booked, as ever, under a pseudonym, that over made up italian bird did not have a fucking clue who i was (or even who baddiel was, who i ate with because he lives, like me, round the corner). Nor were there any kitchen staff peeking out of any porthole. i appreciate that you have to keep your column as lively as possible - and name dropping david i guess might be exciting for your readers (i'll certainly be doing it in my column) - but in your froth to show how folksy and incognito you are, you did your readers and the restaurant an immense disservice: you suggested that i got some special dispensation in eating a la carte. But if you'd spent a bit more time looking at your lunch menu, and a bit less gawping at me, you'd have noticed that it said, "dishes from the evening a la carte menu are available at lunchtime, with some exceptions".

You said "i didn't have the brass neck to demand anything off the unavailable a la carte". it makes you sound like an utter tit. you are not only a chippy fuck but a lazy journalist. 'brass neck'. learn to write, and take your head out of your arse, you fucking twat.

all the best

giles coren

· These are abridged - but not subedited - versions of the original emails.

For more from Giles Coren go to Media Monkey

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