For his caustic wit every week for 20 years, columnist AA Gill commanded a devoted following. They know to fear reading this in public; twice in its 400 pages I choked so hard with laughter that strangers came to my aid.
For a lousy restaurant, he’d forego “the semaphore and the simile of ingredients” in favour of a raucous, diabolical roast of everything that was wrong with the world.
He tore the "foul porcine family" in Peppa Pig apart to show why children deserve a better class of fun, and later, took his son to an Eminem gig to prove it.
He wrote appalling things, and, rapt, we agreed through a haze of eye-watering glee. Yet this was but the amuse bouche: his powerful travel reportage and features transcended pop culture as few would be foolhardy enough to attempt.
He succeeded without cheapening either end of the equation: refugee exoduses “are set up like illegal raves on Facebook”; he reports from an Uzbek paediatric TB ward wearing a “paper Donald Duck mask”. Me, I’m still worried about the Blonde.
