Uncle Dysfunctional

  ‘Gill is a wit and a charmer. Even when he’s wrong, he’s superbly full of himself’ – Lynn Barber

  ‘One of the finest writers of our time’ – Andrew Neil

  ‘A shining intellectual with a remarkable wit. There will never be anyone like him’ – Joan Collins

  ‘He never once produced a boring sentence or a phrase that did not shine’ – John Witherow

  ‘A true master of the bon mot’ – Sam Leith

  ‘A golden writer’ – Andrew Marr

  ‘His text danced across the page, there was sheer delight, music even, in the way he wrote’ – William Sitwell

  ‘AA Gill was one of the last great stylists of modern journalism and one of the very few who could write a column so full of gags and original similes that it was actually worth reading twice’ – Boris Johnson

  ‘I never met AA Gill, and cursed his name often – but he was funny, clever, honest, and wrote terrific sentences’ – Hugh Laurie

  ‘A giant among journalists’ – Martin Ivens

  Also by AA Gill

  Non-Fiction

  AA Gill Is Away

  The Angry Island

  Previous Convictions

  Breakfast at the Wolseley

  Table Talk

  Paper View

  Here and There

  AA Gill is Further Away

  The Golden Door

  Pour Me

  Lines in the Sand

  Fiction

  Sap Rising

  Starcrossed

  Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.co.uk

  This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © AA Gill, 2017

  Uncle Dysfunctional columns originally published in British Esquire

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78689 183 9

  eISBN 978 1 78689 184 6

  Typeset in Baskerville and Sentinel by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Contents

  Introduction by Alex Bilmes

  Chapters

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction by Alex Bilmes

  He wasn’t a cuddly uncle. His wasn’t a reassuring arm around a heaving shoulder, a fond pinch of a tear-stained cheek. There was no coin mysteriously conjured from behind your ear, to be spent on an illicit bag of sweets. He wasn’t indulgent. There was no soft touch. He wouldn’t tolerate selfishness, or showing off, or self-regard, the musty stink of complacent, old-style masculinity. He was as likely to sneer and scorn as smile and sympathise. You didn’t come to him for affirmation, or absolution. You came to be challenged, to have your preconceptions overturned, your follies exposed. You came when you were desperate, and you got what you deserved: strong medicine, in dangerous doses. The effect was immediate. The effect was sobering. The effect was magic.

  Yes, he had a filthy tongue and a dirty mind. Your mother might not approve. (For God’s sake, don’t give this book to your mother.) But he could be empathetic, and compassionate too. He was AA Gill and he wasn’t: he was Uncle Dysfunctional, Adrian’s id unleashed. He was a performance, an act of outrageous ventriloquism, an uproarious work of fiction that was also true. He was always deadly serious, and he was never not taking the piss.

  Uncle Dysfunctional was my idea, Adrian Gill my first marquee signing when, by what he seldom failed to remind me must have been some cosmic clerical error, I was appointed editor of British Esquire at the end of 2010. By then, we’d worked together for close to a decade and during that time he had become more than a colleague. He was a friend, and he was a mentor. He was older than me. He’d seen more, done more, lived more, and thought harder and longer than me about what it means to be a man in the world, about what it means to be a father, a son, a lover, a brother, a friend. He advised me, he admonished me, he educated me, and he made me laugh.

  And I thought that that was what he should do for the readers of Esquire, what he should be for them (and now you) too: a rogue relation, cleverer and braver, wiser and worldlier than us, also madder, and much more difficult. And funnier. Before anything else, he was funny.

  Adrian went for it straight away. He loved the silly name. Even over the phone, as I proposed the idea to him, I fancied I could see the gleam in his eye. For those who have somehow never encountered his work before – really? – Adrian was, until his death in December 2016, at the age of sixty-two, perhaps the most famous newspaper writer in Britain, the hypodermic-sharp critic and feature writer for the Sunday Times, celebrated for his merciless skewerings of second-rate restaurants and his joyful demolitions of terrible TV shows, as well as for his kaleidoscopic travel writing and his unflinching dispatches from some of the world’s most benighted places. Simply put, he was one of Fleet Street’s all-time greats, inimitable, with a voice and a style and a persona utterly his own.

  I knew, because of all this, that Unc, as Adrian called him, would be witty and waspish. I knew he would be honest and uncompromising. I knew he would make you snort, make you guffaw, make you wince, make you throw your hands up, make you think. But I had no idea where Adrian would go with him, or how far. Much farther than I could have imagined, at times much farther than I would have wished, and then farther still. In a little under six years he wrote close to sixty Esquire columns and, believe me, he had no intention of stopping. By the end they were mini surrealist masterpieces, gob-stoppingly weird. His final column – though none of us knew it would be, including him – purported to be a fantastically (or perhaps authentically) misogynist diatribe from Donald Trump. It was, as so often, a virtuoso display.

  Adrian was tickled by Esquire readers’ responses to the Unc columns. “It’s the one thing that people come up to me in the street about,” he once said. “They don’t come up and talk to me about food and television, or African politics. But they will ask me about Esquire. The thing that everybody says is, ‘Are the questions real?’ And they are real. The fact they’re written by me doesn’t make them unreal. I always say, ‘Yes, they are. Trust me: I’m Uncle Dysfunctional.’”

  He was chuffed that we – me, the staff of the magazine, our readers – found the scatological gags and the flamboyant swearing funny. But Uncle Dysfunctional offered more than pungent puerility and phantasmagoric flights of fancy. There was profundity, too, and serious points were made – about sex and sexuality, men and women and other men and other women, parents and children, work and play, ethics and immorality. But, as you are about to discover, he never let more important concerns get in the way of a good knob joke.

  I’m listed as the editor of these columns, and Adrian flattered me, from time to time, by describing me as that in conversation. But “editor” isn’t quite right, not in my case anyway. “Stenographer” would have been more accurate. Or perhaps just “audience”. That’s not false modesty. I took dictation over the phone (all of these columns were filed direct to me or to my colleague, Rachel Fellows) and then, at best, helped shape the astonishing screed into traditional prose, with punctuation and paragraphs and the rest of it. Hardly ever did we change a word. Certainly we didn’t rewrite him. There was no need. He spoke-wrote in perfect sentences, with the beats and the pauses all there. It took no great skill to see where one ought to place the commas and the full stops.

  Adrian was collegiate, then. He often spoke of journalism as a team sport, and I am forever grateful to have had him on my team. But Uncle Dysfunctional was his alone. No one else could have
done it, no one ever will.

  I know he hoped these columns might make a book in the end (we talked about it more than once). All of us involved are thrilled that they have. We only wish he were here to see it published.

  But enough of that. Time to pull up a chair and tell Adrian what the matter is. Girl trouble? Problem at work? Losing your hair? Bent penis? Angry vagina? Not sure whether to bump off your better half? Recurring dreams of giving your boss a blowjob? Worried about the ethics of fantasising about your wife’s younger sister? Irresistibly drawn to cravats/nudity? Wondering whether there’s a god? Want the final, definitive, no-arguments ruling on whether size matters?

  Whatever it is, it won’t be something Uncle Dysfunctional hasn’t heard before and ruled on, firmly and fiercely. And if he doesn’t have the cure for what ails you, he’ll certainly have something to say about it. Something silly, something sage. Something that’ll put hairs on your chest, or make you want to cross your legs. On that, you can depend.

  Alex Bilmes

  London

  February 2017

  Sir,

  I’m an American recently posted to England by my firm. Should I start saying sorry for things that are clearly not my fault, pretending to be more useless than I really am? I want to fit in.

  Todd, London

  Of course you should start fucking apologising. What is it you imagine isn’t your fault? It’s all your bleeding fault. If you didn’t start it you made it worse. And if you didn’t make it worse you didn’t sort it out. You want to know why you need to start apologising? Look at your letter. How did you start that? “I’m an American.” You could have said, “I’m a bald accountant.” “I’m a great shag.” “I’m a power-walker.” “I’m someone who cries at films, but only on my own.” There are an infinite number of ways we can identify ourselves, a whole wide emotional world of possible self-worth and introduction: father, son, husband, friend, colleague . . . But you chose “American”. You want to wear the national superpower hero suit? This is the first and most important thing you can think of saying about yourself? Well, fine. Then you can take on all the responsibility and accountability for all the fuck-ups and dumb shit that goes with it. They couldn’t get Hillary Clinton to do the job so we got you. If you want to fit in and have a good time perhaps you might consider rephrasing that. “Hi, I’m a visitor.” Or, “I’m new here.” Have a nice day.

  Dear Sir,

  Is there any way to choose paint with your wife without it descending into a row?

  Simon, Kensington

  I don’t have a wife. I don’t know who it is you’ve been arguing with. I did have a wife. If you’re rucking with her about paint, good luck mate. You’re in for a world of beige. With taupe accents. And don’t even start on tiles.

  Mr Gill,

  I’ve been pretending to like football for years because it seemed the thing to do. Can I stop now?

  Anon.

  No. Not while you’re still managing Chelsea.

  Dear AA,

  I haven’t read a book since I left university in 1994. Am I missing out?

  Alex, Northampton

  I don’t know. What else haven’t you done since you left university? Had a whipped cream fight? Jumped off a bridge? Talked about French films for five hours? Slept with a friend and remained just friends? Been so happy to see your mates on a Friday night you thought you’d burst? Spent a whole term in a wife-beater trying to flick cards into a bin and smoke Gitanes at the same time? Woken up under a tree? Broken up over politics? You see, Alex, when people write about things they’re not doing it’s usually a symptom of a greater malaise, a deeper depression. If you want to know if you’ve missed out on reading books, go to a fucking bookshop and try a few. They won’t mind, promise. If you left university in ’94, my guess is you’re just about hitting your 10,000-mile reality check. You’re doing an inventory of what you’ve achieved. And comparing it with the to-do list you had when you turned 20. And it’s a shock. There have been quite a lot of breakages. And pilfering. And it’s way past its sell-by date. You either feel trapped or let down. And you realise it’s not all still in front of you. It’s not all to play for. Half of it’s already been used up. And you’ll be lucky if you grab a draw. And the pattern for what the next 35 years is going to be like is already set. The horizon is closer, the panorama narrower, the goal smaller, the rewards prosaic. My guess is you didn’t read a lot of books at university. And the degree you took was not much more than a label to get you three years of brilliant fun. And the further from it you get the more brilliantly it shines, and by contrast how much dimmer and more predictable your current life seems. But don’t despair. There’s an answer – it’s not complicated. It’s: suck in your gut and get on with it. This is the human condition. Live with it. In particular, it’s the male human condition. When you were 20 you were a twat: insufferable, arrogant, thoughtless, boastful. You imagined all sorts of shit. You thought you’d be mates forever. You thought making money was about charm and being in the right place at the right time. You thought a plastic tube with a squeezy bulb would make your willy bigger and that being good in bed was a trick you did with your fingers, like shadow puppets. You thought England would win the World Cup before you were 30 and Salt-N-Pepa were the coolest hip-hop combo ever. So why should your post A-level wish list be any more reliable? The one thing you didn’t have then was this paunch of self-pity. My advice is, whatever it is you think is holding you back or conspiring against you, embrace it. Do more of it. If it’s responsibility you hate, take on more of it. If it’s work, stay later. That’s counterintuitive, but, trust me, without exception, the escape plans men make for themselves are all risible, pathetic, callow, selfish and destructive. Live with it. This is what you’re supposed to feel. This is being a man. Actually, on second thoughts, yes, you are missing out. Books, novels, are a great consolation. That’s why they were invented, why they’re written.

  Mr Gill,

  I’ve been told that flowers in pots aren’t a socially acceptable gift, and that red roses are infra dig and carnations are common. I don’t understand any of this, because I am common. I was brought up in a tower block in Sheffield. My mum was a dinner lady, my dad worked for the gas board. Flowers were for weddings and funerals. I’m very, very successful and very, very smart. The people I have to work and mix with seem to know this stuff genetically. Can you give me a quick guide? I know it doesn’t matter but it sort of does.

  Rick, London

  I could tell you that the only acceptable roses are white or very faintly pink, but not salmon. And that long stems without thorns, in boxes, are laugh-out-loud embarrassing. And that all orchids are always hopelessly Thai Airways and that flowers mixed with vegetables are very passé and that tight balls of trimmed blooms in carefully complementary hues are so over. And never, ever send dried flowers or lilies with the stamens cut out or almost anything out of season. But contrarily, things that look like funeral decorations are bizarrely rather chic. And ideally cut flowers should look like they came from your garden and that your garden needs a tractor to drive round it and has a greenhouse the size of a tennis court. And never hand over flowers. They must be delivered, but not by a flower shop. They should come instantly after the event you’re being grateful or apologising for. That is, within eight hours, including weekends and bank holidays. I could tell you all that. But I’m not going to. Put it out of your mind. Cast it into the Pit of Forgotten. Because you’re right. We don’t have to be told this. We do know it genetically. And you will always get something wrong. The wrong card. The wrong ink. The wrong words. The wrong sign-off. There is no end to this stuff. It’s like nuclear physics. You think you’ve found the smallest possible particle of snobbery but there’s always something more negligibly, minutely irrational. And you’re also right to say it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you’re not quite successful enough. Give it a couple of years, propelled by your obvious Lawrentian resentment, you’ll do better than
all of them. And then when all of your friends are posh employees, you can give them what you like. Paper flowers, bags of gypsophilia seeds. They will love and respect you from the bottom of their prune-like hearts. And I promise you still won’t feel any less uncomfortable and they won’t feel a scintilla less entitled.

  Dear Sir,

  Matching his and hers tattoos: ever acceptable?

  Winston, Manchester

  Only if you’re Danish bacon.

  AA,

  My fiancé’s from Glasgow. He’s insisting on getting married in a kilt. I’m from Utah. My family are very conservative and religious. They’re not going to understand. How can I get him into trousers without hurting his ethnic feelings?

  Mary-Beth, by email

  Ethnic feelings? He’s from fucking Glasgow, for Christ’s sake. The kilt is the least of your worries. Even when they find out what he’s not got on underneath, and they surely will, wait till your parents get a load of the in-laws and his childhood mates. The reception is going to be fabulous. Are you writing this up as a film treatment? If not, do you mind if I have it? PS, do you seat your mothers by height or age?

  Dear Sir,

  When, if ever, is it permissible for a man to sign off a text with “love” or “x”? And don’t say “best” is best, because it isn’t. Nor “yours” nor “faithfully” nor “peace”.

  Love Derek x

  Darling, sweetheart, cupcake. It’s permissible, as you sweetly put it, to sign texts any damn way you like. You’re all so bloody fond of the internet and you bang on and on about messaging and techno and plugged-in stuff, and you say it’s all about freedom and honesty, and the day after you get a Twitter account you’re all constipated about the raised-pinkie etiquette of how to say “cheerio”, and all the rest of the manners business and the after-you niceties. You sound like my grandparents. Why do you care? Why do you want to start making up rules and laws and a smirking snobbery about something you say is pristine, anarchic and lawless, and naked? If it’s any help, Alexander Graham Bell suggested that you answered his implement with a firm and clear, “Ahoy”. So why not start with that? And why don’t you finish with . . .