Giles Coren and the Evils of Nepotism!

I, like many people in the UK, love reading my newspaper at the weekend. There is something heart-warmingly lovely about simply sitting down with a nice cup of tea and wading your way through The Times on a Saturday. Heaven. But there are parts of the paper, or more particularly the magazine, that I sadly can no longer look at, as they cause me to froth at the mouth, tear at what is left of my hair and use language that would make a docker vomit. The worst part for me, aside from the asinine inane fashion crap (I'll save that for another Spleen...), is in the food section. Here, The Times employs as their restaurant critic, a certain Giles Coren. Who? Well, let’s look at his qualifications for this post. Can he cook? By his own admission on a TV interview, no he jolly well can't. What experience has he got of running a restaurant? Just this side of sod all. His journalistic experience? Slightly less than the previous answer. So just how does a young man, simply waltz into a national newspaper and pick up the rather enviable job of reviewing restaurants every week? It's a good question. Now just by lucky chance, Giles Coren has a rather famous Daddy who is well known throughout Fleet Street as a commentator, writer and former editor of Punch. His name is Alan Coren. So imagine when young Master Coren was scratching round for a job after his GCSE's, what do you think he did? Get jobs flipping burgers at McDonalds? Or as the tea boy at a local regional newspaper and work his way up in the world of journalism? Did he bollocks. He approaches a national newspaper, mentions Daddy to the Editor and Bob's your uncle, or as in this case, Alan is your Daddy. Let us change the set up. Imagine Giles is the wonderfully gifted son of Sid Knobend, a panel beater from Plumstead. Young Giles Knobend has decided to better himself, has worked hard at school, gained some great qualifications and shows tremendous promise as a writer. On leaving his College/University with a perfectly respectable degree, he approaches a well known national newspaper editor and demands the job of restaurant critic. The answer he would receive would probably rhyme with "puck cough you cheeky mustard". So, now Giles Coren has this lovely job, where does he go to review restaurants? The length and breadth of this great land of ours? No, sadly not. The poor little cherub can barely seem to stagger further than the west end of London these days, I mean is there life outside of central London? (SNORT BRAY SNORT!). And for Christ's sake don't get me started on his sister Victoria...
But nepotism is everywhere. You can't honestly tell me that Stella-sodding-McCartney could have flogged her tacked together abominations to other celebrity half-wits if she didn't just happen to be the daughter of everyone's favourite surviving mop top (unless of course you were always a Ringo fan)? And have you also noticed that one of the BBC's new political correspondents is very obviously a mini-me of John Sergeant, their old political correspondent? I wonder how HE got the job?? Peter and Dan Snow? Is it just a coincidence that when the BBC was putting their "Battlefield Britain" series together that the best two CV's they came across happened to come from the same family? Even Judith-bloody-Chalmers progeny, Mark Durden-Smith is getting in on the act, frequently appearing on third rate TV shows on various obscure digital channels. Give him his due, he didn't call himself Mark Chalmers, but I can't believe mumsy didn't have a teensy weensy word in someone's ear when Marky-Warky's career success looked about as real and long lasting as his Mother's orange tan.
Nepotism is everywhere in British media. So many very gifted and talented people miss out, simply because someone else happens to know someone in a position of power, or more likely, is related to that person. It is wrong, it should never happen and it HAS to go into Room 101. And so does Giles Coren, unless he wants to buy me lunch this week, somewhere other than the west end of London, mate!?