One word dominated among the tributes when AA Gill died almost six months ago. Friends and rivals united to call him “irreplaceable”, which perhaps turns out to be literal as much as eulogistic.
Maybe the Sunday Times shouldn’t be looking for an acerbic TV reviewer, teetotal food critic and specialist features writer, all rolled into one headcount slot. But, half a year on, there seems no outward and visible sign of either a new television voice or new gastronomic champion in place. The baton roll basket seems to pass each week between a variety of different hands, some of them interested in brooding on life, some more absorbed by the shortcrust pastry on their apple pie, but none showing signs of promised permanency.
It’s an odd omission. Food writers on the upmarket nationals can’t just witter on about the food or service at some new north London caff conversion. They need to bring something extra – humour, authority, wider controversy – to their role, to be essayists as well as hardened chompers.
Gill, in a sense, defined that job. Food was merely a peg to hang his phraseology on. So succeeding him gives a carte blanche to original talent. Except that, alas, the plate before us still lies empty, the seat at the table weirdly unfilled.
• Here’s another cloud in that clear blue Sky. ESPN, kickstarted by Disney and Hearst, has been the world’s sports and cable wunderkind for decades. But last week it asked 800 employees to walk the plank. Sporting rights continue to soar: nearly double in the last seven years, and add 11% more this year, while subscription levels have taken a 10m cold bath. It’s a bind (and one that ought prospectively to worry BT and Sky as well). Any answers? ESPN bosses hope so. But I’m with sceptics at recode.net: “ESPN thinks it will ... grow its subscriber revenue by charging its remaining subscribers more for the service, and [by] growing ad rates, too”. But don’t hold your breath as those 800 workers hear the final whistle.
