Just when this column thought it might go two weeks without mentioning Giles ‘porn’Coren, the Times hack and would-be TV star decides to raise his profile in a most unfortunate way.
As anyone who has visited any media gossip website in the past week will know, Coren has let rip with another of his ballistic emails to the subs’ desk. This time he was unhappy with a change made to his copy in a restaurant review.
We won’t bore you with the details (it all comes down to blow jobs and the Yiddish word ‘nosh”) but will give you a flavour of his incredibly long and abusive email.
‘I don’t really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering … This was shit, shit sub-editing … There is no length issue. This is someone thinking ‘I’ll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate c**t and I know best’ Well, you fucking don’t … I mean, fucking christ, don’t you read the copy? I am sorry if this looks petty … but I care deeply about my work and I hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing.”
Axegrinder wondered how this went down with the wider subbing community. A visit to online forum Subs UK provided a clear answer. ‘What a disgusting example of a man,'(Stephen Cunningsworth); ‘I think he had a point, if expressed in an extremely rude, long-winded and badly typed way,'(Kirsten Foster); ‘Decent subs lose their jobs when people throw their toys from the pram like this,'(Matthew Glasby); ‘I love his column, and perhaps he’s worth keeping happy, but what a sad specimen of a character,'(Sarah Richardson); ‘How unbelievably precious and self-important. If subs had to check every amend with the writers, newspapers and magazines would never would never get published,'(James Pringle); ‘I’ve given up expecting to be treated like a human being and only do minimal changes because I can’t be bothered with the egos,'(Chloe Chapman); ‘What he probably doesn’t realise, the Daddy-was-a-columnist-too little chap is that the subs must give about 1,000th of a fuck about his copy compared with him,'(Simon Busch).
Coren is not the first writer to send scathing missives to subs. When Julie Burchill was in her prime she did a similar thing to Mail on Sunday subs, accusing them of massacring her copy. They hit back by producing their own badges which proudly declared ‘I butchered Burchill”.
Perhaps Times subs should respond with their own badge and slogan. How about ‘We’re the c**ts that cut Coren”?
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