Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
THE ONE MAN ANGRIER THAN PAXO
It’s the biggest quiz show since Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and the surprise host of 500 Questions is journalist Giles Coren, once dubbed the angriest man in Britain. Prepare to be shocked, he says...
So, you’re a TV executive bringing a spangly new quiz show to primetime British TV. It’s an American format – big razzledazzle set, huge budget – and those responsible for it are billing it as a new Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?. High stakes then. So who do you ask to host this new show? ‘Well, the obvious options would be Phillip Schofield or Ant & Dec or Dermot O’Leary, wouldn’t they?’ says the man who did land the job. ‘Obvious ITV face, safe pair of hands, that sort of thing.’ Giles Coren – journalist, restaurant reviewer, presenter of niche food-based shows – gets the question in before anyone else can. ‘So what am I doing in the middle of it? What were they thinking?!’
Yes, it’s hard to think of a less obvious choice for a job that traditionally involves smiling at people through very white teeth. This is someone who’s been described as ‘the angriest man in Britain’. Before he was paired up with that nice Sue Perkins (who went on to present Bake Off) and let loose on our TV screens for historical food series The Supersizers, Giles was best known as a newspaper columnist who hated everyone and everything.
His most famous offering, however, wasn’t a carefully crafted opinion piece, but an irate email rant to a copy editor who had dared to dabble with his work. The email – breathtaking in its viciousness and pettiness – was leaked to massive sniggers in the media world. Is he still cringing? Not a bit of it. ‘Actually, The Guardian did me a huge favour. They had me on the front page! Suddenly I was the angriest man in Britain – all because of me being drunk at two in the morning, majorly p****d off because of a small typo. My wife Esther had said, “Don’t send it” but bam, I sent it.’ He says he had the last laugh because on the back of it, ‘I got a six-figure advance to write a book that was basically a collection of my old pieces.’
That was the old Giles, though. This new gig at the helm of 500 Questions, ITV’s new quiz show that will air every weeknight, is a total departure. Or as he puts it, ‘it’s a great opportunity for me to be much less of a b*****d’. Actually he seems to be relishing the idea of being telly’s new bad boy. ‘I think that bit of darkness in my profile is what makes them think I might be an interesting person for a quiz show, because there’s that element of danger. I mean, there isn’t really because it’s pre-recorded. What am I going to do? Punch someone?’
In the show Giles stands on a glitzy stage while a succession of contestants attempt to progress through ten rounds of 50 rapid-fire questions, each a different category, without getting three in a row wrong to win up to £250,000. By any standards it’s a big leap. His notoriety may have led to a TV career of sorts, but it was firmly in BBC2 niche territory, ‘mostly larking about with Sue, wearing a codpiece, eating and getting drunk’. He admits to a panic the night before filming of 500 Questions started and phoning his wife, fellow journalist Esther Walker. ‘She said, “Just watch Paxman, give them your Paxman.” So I watched a bit of University Challenge, thinking, “This is great.” There’s something smart, sexy and cool about Paxman.’ Then he put on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and was wowed by Chris Tarrant ‘being all avuncular’. Next was Anne Robinson (‘wooden, but it worked. It went global’). So who’s he going to channel? ‘None of them. I decided they were all so unique I had to forget them and be me. If they asked me to do it they must like what I do.’ The TV star whose career he’d most like to emulate is Jeremy Clarkson. ‘Well, he’s a talented, funny writer and a great presenter with huge charm. I wouldn’t mind being regarded in the way he is – brilliant and clever and loveable by some people, and a terrible b*****d by others.’ He says he can quite understand why Clarkson came a cropper. ‘There’s a thing most TV people go through which is that you think you are The Man. Quite early on you have people saying, “Can I get you anything?”’ Even a low-key BBC2 TV career gave Giles a flavour of this, he says. ‘I was a teeny little pathetic version of Jeremy who got too big for his boots. But I bet they wish they’d bought Jeremy his steak dinner now.’
So does he have what it takes for prime time? Well, physically, he thinks so. ‘I was always too handsome to be a journalist so I had to get on TV,’ he points out. He’s already had the obligatory trip to the dentist and is looking telly-tanned. Is there a worry about going a bit too Dale Winton? ‘Yes, I don’t want to suddenly go all David Davis or whatever the orange fellow who does the antiques is called.’ I think he means David Dickinson.
Actually he credits his six-pack for his TV career. He was offered a job, he says, because shows about food were hugely popular but the programme-makers had run out of chefs to host them, so they went hunting for restaurant critics. ‘And I was the only one who was in shape. Most reviewers are massive overeaters. Jonathan Meades was 19st. Jay Rayner of The Observer is a big hefty lad, AA Gill is thin but I suppose he’s got that funny lisp so they couldn’t use him.’
What about presenting talent? Was he always convinced he had it? His reply is vintage Giles Coren: it’s not that he thinks he’s brilliant, but that everyone else is dreadful. ‘Most presenters are so rubbish. That’s the thing. I take great solace in the rubbishness of other people. So many TV presenters are so... ghastly.’ Can he name names? ‘I couldn’t possibly. Most of them! Most of them are pretty dull. But I’m related to most of the quiz show hosts so I can’t.’
He isn’t joking either. He’s perhaps Britain’s most impeccably connected TV star. His sister is Victoria Coren, who hosts highbrow quiz show Only Connect. Her husband, his brother-in-law, is serial quiz show panellist and current Would I Lie To You? team captain David Mitchell. His wife Esther’s sister, events organiser Hannah Bronwen Snow, is married to Pointless host Alexander Armstrong, making him another brother-in-law. And Giles and Victoria’s late father was the muchloved writer and broadcaster Alan Coren. Yes, the screams of nepotism have followed him all his life and no, he doesn’t give a fig. ‘My sister worries about nepotism. She doesn’t want people to think we’re some terrible media family. I couldn’t care less.’
Still, suggest that the Coren clan sit around discussing their respective TV empires and he shoots you down. ‘No one in TV gives a damn what anyone else in TV is doing. If I phone up my brother-in-law Alexander, or my sister or my great friend Richard Bacon or my great friend Jamie Theakston and say, “I’ve been offered this job but I’m not sure” they’ll say, “Yeah, but about me... let me tell you what happened to me this week.” That’s what TV is like.’
He has wondered what his father would make of the move into quiz shows. He knows Alan would have frowned on some of his son’s career moves, but a primetime quiz show? ‘He’d think it was brilliant, a major hoot.’
500 Questions starts on ITV on Monday 22 August.