Editor of The Dish and Food Editor of the Sunday Times, Laurel Ives worked closely with Adrian for the past two years:
Every Monday, the phone would ring and it would be Adrian calling to discuss where to go for his next restaurant review. I’d sometimes suggest that he might want to visit a new place in north London or even, gasp, east London. These would mostly be dismissed.
One time I scored a small victory when he agreed to visit Bellanger in Islington, the latest restaurant from the owners of his favourite hangout, The Wolseley. The piece came in, and brilliant though it was, most of it was about the ghastly people of Islington (I live in Islington).
Restaurants outside the M25 were similarly dismissed (except during his annual stalking pilgrimage to Scotland). But Adrian was always surprising. He was immensely passionate and knowledgable about the world of food, and happy to travel in search of a good story.
My favourite piece was about a Suffolk farm that produces raw milk, for The Dish. He wrote a lyrical feature about the delights of milk farmed in the old-fashioned way, and his beaming face on the cover said it all. We had so many more features planned. We will all miss his writing – I’ll miss our Monday-morning chats.
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Journalist Sophie Haydock took AA Gill’s Table Talk copy each week:
Adrian was famously dyslexic and had established a rather long-winded but charming way of filing his copy each week. He would deliver his review to me over the phone – sometimes shouting at the memory of one of the meals he’d eaten, sometimes stumbling over a sentence and rewriting it as he spoke, often struggling to read his own writing: “What the f*** does that say?” he’d demand, rhetorically.
I’d record our conversation, and type it up. When it came to transcribing his copy, it was no easy task to decipher what he’d said, either. It was often a game of cryptic crossword trying to work out his meaning.
I learnt so much from him. I once told him I kept an “AA Gill dictionary” document on my computer, adding a word and definition to it every time I had to look up a word he’d used in his copy. He loved that. I didn’t tell him the list extended to over 100 words. One of his favourites, “logorrheic”, I had to look up early on: “Pertaining to the over use of words or excessive talkativeness.”
Deputy food editor Francesca Angelini worked with Adrian on The Sunday Times Magazine and The Dish:
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Adrian kept the food desk entertained like no one else. He would answer the phone in a different accent each time I called, and often began the conversation by making me shout out the artist and title of at least five songs before their intros finished.
He never submitted typed copy. As a result of dictating it over the phone, copy mix-ups were frequent. A sentence nearly made it into print that described a restaurant’s cutlery as made by “a leftie” (Alessi). Another, which the culture editor reminded me of yesterday, came through as “my newt’s livers” (beef, eh?) – when they read it out loud, slowly, the meaning became clear.
Adrian couldn’t pronounce his Rs, and in his final review, I mistook “medical barrel-scraping” for “medical bowel-scraping” – but when I read it back to him he was delighted: “Keep it, keep it, I like it, it’s even better,” he said. There was one rule for cutting his copy – never, ever lose a joke.
Mark Curtis-Raleigh regularly subbed AA Gill’s Table Talk copy:
What I always liked about Adrian was that, perhaps owing to his dyslexia and despite his august status, he really understood and appreciated what the sub-editors did for him. Unlike many lesser writers, he valued us and showed us consideration.
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My mother was most excited when he quoted my queries at the end of his review of Sackville’s: “This is the time of year when I need to say thank you to the people who make this column work; first to Sophie, Frankie and Clare, who write down the copy, and then the sub-editors, who make it make sense. There is a hack truism that writers always complain about sub-editors and subs always complain about writers. Not me. They save my pancetta on a weekly basis. And I’m immensely grateful. Just to give you a taste of what I mean, here is the last email I was sent: ‘Couple of points: 1) “Boracic” seems to be the correct spelling for the slang term meaning skint (boracic lint). 2) Changed octopus “legs” to “tentacles” as they apparently have both arms and legs. 3) Unable to confirm similarity of the scrotum to cods’ swim bladders, but I’m sure you’re right.’ Thank you.”