Previously in this series: If Prince were your boyfriend.
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, your mother would send you copies of Tatler (one for each of you) every time you were featured in a society column. “It’s embarrassing,” you’d say to her over breakfast. She’d just smile, and you’d both silently agree to keep the old copies in the bathroom, as a compromise.
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, you’d insist on accompanying her behind the scenes of the Great British Bake-Off. “You don’t really want to come, do you?” she’d ask repeatedly. “It’s mostly just standing around waiting.”
“Of course I want to come!” (Mostly to hear if the rumor is true, that when contestants start to cry, she starts naming brands during filming so they can’t air any embarrassing footage. It turns out it is, but Sue won’t admit to doing it on purpose. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she’ll say.)
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, the two of you would host Top Gear together. After a few weeks on the air, Jeremy Clarkson would call you himself from his stay on a special therapy island. “It should always have been you,” he says. “You bring a special energy to the show that I lacked, somehow, in the very essence of my being, and I wish you both every happiness.”
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, you would have gone to the right college. You know the one. Whenever someone asked you in conversation, you’d mention the name effortlessly and unself-consciously, neither overly proud nor overly aggrieved about it.
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, you would find little things you had mentioned an interest in – just casually, in passing, during unremarkable conversations – turn up around the house. “I heard you mention it, and it was on the way home,” she’d say, only after being pressed into a confession. “Honestly, it wasn’t anything.”
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, Giles Coren would turn up unannounced for dinner one evening, already a little drunk, and grill you with increasing rudeness over the course of the evening. Later, he would call Sue from his parked car. “I am sorry about that,” he’ll say. “I didn’t realize this was it. I hadn’t expected she was going to be the one.” And Sue will tell him to call a cab and sleep it off, and they won’t speak of it again, because they won’t need to. And the week after that, Giles and his wife will have the two of you over for dinner, and it will be wonderful.
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, the island from Dinotopia would be real, and you’d be allowed to visit it once in your life.
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, you’d have studied Latin in school, but you would never use your knowledge of it to make someone else feel backwards, only to bring joy to Classics majors at dinner parties. You would also, incidentally, know exactly when to leave dinner parties, neither too early nor too late, and you would never be the drunkest guest in attendance.
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, every afternoon would be like that one hazy afternoon-sequence in Imagine Me & You, the really gorgeously lit falling-in-love montage, where Luce and Rachel walk through the park and make out on a bunch of cut roses.
You know those really great slouchy olive-green jackets that don’t look like much on first glance but go with everything and are somehow $700 and also the actual perfect weight and fit? You would have, like, six of those, just lying around the house, if Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, and they would effortlessly fall at just the right spot on your wrist.
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, she would adjust your collar or scarf every morning before leaving for work. If you ever brought it to her attention, she’d have no idea that she did it, and probably become self-conscious about it, so you never mention it.
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, you’d start getting a lot of friendly social invitations from Rachel Maddow. You wouldn’t feel any rush getting back to her, either. Let her come to you.
Tags: beauty, relationships
Yessssssss, I was wondering when my abiding affection for Sue Perkins and Giles Coren and their historical culinary adventures would intersect with The Toast!
Question, can our meals with Giles and his wife include his gorgeous sister and her husband? I just feel like THAT is my true social destiny.
ETA – and can I have carte blanche to ship people off to Special Therapy Island? I think I’m just going to run with this brand new fantasy life you’ve gifted us here.
Right? If I’m dating Sue (perfection) I demand double-dates/ dinner parties with David and Victoria. And Sandy Toksvig!
Yes! How DOES one insinuate themselves into the British panel show social set? I imagine attending Cambridge in the early 90s has a shit-ton to do with it, also not being a foolish hillbilly American. Ah well.
Hmm. As an American, it’s probably a sign that my Anglophilia is getting a little too pronounced when someone mentions the “British panel show social set” and I can picture exactly who is a member of that set.
It is a pretty great set.
David Mitchell got rejected from the Oxford college I went to (many years later, but still). We could have run into each other at alumni events! But no, they had to turn him down.
I’ve been dying to meet Samantha from “I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue”.
waaaaahhh I want it
I used to have many daydreams about dinner parties with David Mitchell and Victoria Coren-Mitchell, and then read his memoir and found myself somewhat put off. I just want to love you, David! Why must you say things that I disagree with?
I had the same problem with Victoria after her odd column after the Woody Allen allegations last year.
Why can people not live up to our expectations? 🙁
Oh no, what didn’t you like? I listened to it as an audiobook and I spent the whole time basically just walking around grinning foolishly that David Mitchell was talking to me for hours at a time that I didn’t even notice things to not like.
There were quite a few things. There’s one bit where he talks about how he’s never been offered cocaine, and while he doesn’t want cocaine he’d quite like to know he doesn’t just look so uncool that there’s no point offering – fine, but then he compares it to vegetarianism. “It’s like being a vegetarian to whom no one has ever offered any meat. They wouldn’t be pleased. A vegetarian doesn’t want meat, but neither does he (or she – usually a she, let’s be honest) want the thought that, as soon as she enters a room, everyone assumes she’s a vegetarian. No one, however merciful towards animals, wants to look so vegetarian in every way that no one has even bothered to check.” I just found this whole passage a bit unpleasant – the prefacing of the “most vegetarians are women” thing with “let’s be honest”, which sounds to me a bit like he’s saying, “Screw political correctness, guys, we all know that vegetarianism is female nonsense really, right?”, the idea that nobody wants to look like a vegetarian (I think my vegetarian boyfriend would be quite happy if nobody offered him meat ever again, so he didn’t have to awkwardly refuse, and “looking like a vegetarian” would just be convenient), and just the whole tone. There’s also a bit where he talks about cross-dressing in comedy and how the majority of people find men dressed as women funny: “This is one of the reasons transsexuals have such a hard time. … even for those of us who aren’t remotely offended by what transsexuals do with their bodies or their lives, there’s the problem that, when a large man decides to live and dress as a woman – and to have what surgery in that direction they can to help the process – what most of us still see is a bloke in a dress. // And it does often seem to be quite a large man, wearing quite an old-fashioned twinset and pearls type of get-up – although they may just be the only ones we notice. … So it’s funny. But we’re not supposed to find it funny – so it’s even funnier. … To the comedy-appreciating parts of the brain, it’s as if someone has solemnly announced their intention, in order to be more completely themselves, to live a life of constantly slipping on banana skins.”
There are also a lot of jokes about sex workers, and a bit where he says that he “can’t immediately see the flaw” in the argument “if she didn’t want me to gawp, she shouldn’t wear a low-cut dress”, and just a general air of conservatism and mean-spiritedness that made me a bit uncomfortable. I came away from it feeling like he wouldn’t understand or like me that much. It made me very sad, because I have always been a fan and assumed we would get on.
Yes, I see what you mean. I think when I was listening I just accepted that his stage persona is a slightly curmudgeonly and uptight man and that his upbringing in all boys schools followed by the privileged world of his post-secondary education was going to mean that I would not necessarily agree with everything he’d said.
I don’t think he says anything in the book that made me think of him in a new, negative light so maybe going into it with the assumption that we’d had
different experiences and there’d be at least a few things I disagreed with made it easier for me to enjoy the book.
Certainly there was nothing in it as jarring as some of the memoirs of female comedians, but maybe that’s because I (unfairly) expect more from them.
I suppose I had expected that we would be more similar. Our backgrounds are different (I went to my local comprehensive, which failed its OFSTED inspection while I was there, rather than a single-sex independent school), but I am also Oxbridge-educated and uptight and pedantic, so I vaguely assumed that we would have more in common. (Also, the vast majority of Oxford people I know are left-wing and queer/queer-friendly and not posh. I realise this is a massive selection bias, but I still find the posh conservative types to be less common.) I ended up feeling like he was more closed-minded and unpleasant than I had expected, and so it was pretty disappointing.
‘Question, can our meals with Giles and his wife include his gorgeous sister and her husband?’
The one who’s got her tongue up Polanski AND Woody Allen? Yeah, you’re welcome to her.
FINALLY.
Also, this post has sent me down a rabbit hole trying to find ways to watch “Heading Out” online in the US, and I can’t find one. Halp.
My absolute favorite part of every Supersizers episode is the moments where Giles is trying his hardest to disguise his massive crush on Sue and COMPLETELY FAILING. Not that I blame him in the least.
God, I want to rewatch it just for that. Also, Good Life because THEY HAD A PIGGY AND THEY WERE SO PRESH IN THEIR HOME AND EVERYTHING
The pig! The gardening! It was all wonderful.
EEEEEEEEEEE. I may have made a tiny high-pitched noise like that when I saw the headline.
(I actually did study Latin in school, and I’m working on acquiring the “leaving a party at the perfect moment” skill — so perhaps I’m getting a tiny bit closer to being worthy of dating Sue Perkins? A girl can dream, after all.)
Mel is obviously quite happy for the two of you, and you often get coffee together, just the three of you. Nobody questions this.
I am genuinely, totally taken aback that Giles Coren, notably terrible man, features in this fantasy in any way.
I LOVE HIM HOW VERY DARE YOU
he’s such a little goober on Supersizers Go! what’s not to love, he’s like a scruffy little remora hanging on to Sue’s shark
Well, I mean, each to their own, but he’s sort of notorious (at least in the UK) for writing a lot of anti-feminist, deliberately antagonistic stuff- it’s mostly paywalled now, but this happened http://ssy.org.uk/2011/01/giles-coren-what-a/ , and he also wrote a thing about how being on holiday with his toddler daughter was the sexiest thing that had ever happened to him, and about how his son was going to fuck the then-hours-old Princess of Cambridge, and this (http://i.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/2pvstd/giles_coren_if_you_think_this_is_a_feminist_think/), which includes this gem “For example, I married my wife only partly because she was hot, funny and available but mostly because — which is much more rare — she was prepared to lay her job aside, learn to cook and make every imaginable sacrifice to raise our children.”
and also the pretty transphobic line ” If my son ever puts a dress on for any reason other than to play Desdemona in the house play at his all-boys school, there will be no end of trouble. There are allotted roles in this world for men and women, they are quite flexible these days, and I am happy with them as they are.”.
I have to say, I would not go to dinner with him even for S. Perkins!
He’s always struck me as the sort of well-off, well-educated dude who thinks he’s very open-minded and accepting- of course- and the depth of his conviction that he’s such a normal, decent dude gives him the right to say whatever awful things pop into his head. And then later when he’s called out on it he’ll say he was just exaggerating for comedic effect, or making a point about x,y,z, when actually no, he just has a lot of awful viewpoints that he hasn’t examined at all because he’s never needed to.
He was a good foil to Sue in Supersizers… because obviously she doesn’t take any of his crap, and he was sort of set up to play the charming fall guy. But I’ve never felt the need to follow any of his other work.
I have to say, I think you’re giving him too much credit: his whole job is to stir up this kind of controversy. I don’t think it’s accidental at all, and I definitely don’t think he thinks of himself as “open-minded and accepting”.
Hm, I suppose. I only really know him from Supersizers, and that was the impression I got then. (maybe from the bits where Sue stays home and paints on gravy stockings or whatever, while he’s out having a laugh. I guess the show was very self-aware that they were pointing out the gender (and class) disparities of the past, and that Giles was the exact sort of dude who would benefit from those disparities. But he might have been genuinely unfazed by it- or able to rationalize it by being ~in the past~ – and they just cleverly edited the show to seem otherwise.)
I have no idea what the tone of his other stuff is, but if it’s as you say, then that’s even more depressing.
Anyways, maybe open-minded isn’t the right term, but that deep-seated conviction of cultural rightness is something I associate with the affable dudes I knew in high school and college who would have self-identified that way and then aggressively expected you to accept all of their shittiness. And that’s who he reminds me of.
Oh, too bad! I will exclude this from my headcanon and continue to appreciate how fun he and Sue are on Supersizers!
And his whole anti-Polish thing. He just seems to specialize in a little something to offend everyone and his is a wikipedia page I wish I’d never read because I really did like Supersizers up until that point.
Mr Coren, you are Jewish and you are angry. I am partly Jewish and sometimes I get angry too. I get it. I do. But I still don’t think you completely understand history. And you’re a rather large asshole.
Sincerely,
-bighairnoheart (who somehow manages to be both Polish and Jewish without having the Polish side lock the Jewish side in a synagogue and burn it for laughs)
Given his education, colour me not at all surprised by any of this.
OH, and that time he called a woman who mildly criticised one of his columns a “barren old hag”. I do see why you think he’s charming- that’s why he is so very successful, after all. I was just sort of surprised.
He compared Amazon small print to rape and then refused to acknowledge that some people might be upset by this: http://www.newstatesman.com/media-mole/2015/02/gi…
From the article:
“Most amazingly, now that he’s being called out for comparing his laziness in checking his bank statements to sexual assault, he’s defending himself by linking to Urban Dictionary’s definition of the phrase “corporate rape”. As discourse goes, it’s of a quality only a smidgen better than those arguments people have in pen on the inside doors of pub toilets”
Oh my god Dinotopia – It looks so real how is it not real? I don’t even like heights but I want to live in that tree house city forever.
Also Latin. I studied Latin in school and was terrible at it. I fumbled my way awkwardly through every Thomas Aquinas translation ever (easy Latin!) and only got decent grades by making comparisons between parts of speech and Aristotle’s categories. I made it through every Latin class by the theoretical b.s. of my pants.
But if you were dating Sue you’d make subtle Latin-grammar jokes that would cause Stephen Fry to laugh so hard he shoots Madeira out of his nose
I just want to be Stephen’s friend, is that so wrong?
If Stephen Fry Were Your BFF Who Comes Over To Your House For Madeira And Funny Stories: the next in this series. (PLEASE, SOMEONE, WRITE THIS.)
I was wondering why Stephen Fry did not somehow factor into this piece! Otherwise… perfection.
You’d find out that all the sordid things you imagined were true about the Footlights really are true.
All of them.
Yes, even that.
…
OH THANK GOD
I’m soooooooooooooooo here for this, god
Esp. the dinner party Classics one bc that is all my goals for adulthood, and of course it features Sue Perkins. Why wouldn’t it.
definitely didn’t burst into tears in re: Top Gear, why do you ask
I would definitely cry with relief if Jeremy Clarkson were sent far, far away from the civilized world. Like, to Mars or something.
THat was the highllight for me. Just wishin’
The furthest man has ever gone…from the world.
Even though he’s kind of terrible and I knew it was wrong I did kind of love how soppy Giles Coren was over Sue in the Supersizers and how it totally seemed like he was deliberately orchestrating circumstances where they had to kiss. That Christmas 70s thing I swear was him trying to seduce her. I bet he dropped his fondue on purpose too.
yes yes yes
Don’t forget the lovely summer place in the South of France somewhere where Mel, Mary Berry and will come to drink lemonade eat tiny perfect cakes and play charades in the manner of Classic Will and Grace. only better and more obscure. Vaguely we will wonder if Rachel Maddow is any good at charades.
Sue would bring you shopping and to her tailor and teach you how to mix and match to create the perfect touch-of-feminine androgynous look, but you’d be happier admiring that look on her than trying to replicate it yourself. You can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice.
I firmly believe that if Sue Perkins were my girlfriend, I’d be Mel Giedroyc. Which would be lovely.
There was a programme a while ago called First Love with people revisiting things they used to do but gave up, and Sue went to be a concert pianist. And she spoke about how they’d grown apart a little when their lives were so different, partly because Mel had heterosexuality and children and Sue didn’t, but when she got on stage she poured all her love for Mel into her playing, and it came together and was perfect.
(Also the episode of Light Lunch with French and Sauunders was comedy duo HEAVEN, especially when Dawn French challenged Mel to see who could deep throat a Curly Wurly, and Mel just ate hers.)
special therapy island
run by the same French company that oversaw Napoleon’s exile. They will be very humane, but there will be no escape.
With or without arsenic poisoning?
I am profoundly delighted by the notion of Sue Perkins hosting Top Gear. MAKE THIS HAPPEN, UNIVERSE.
YESSSS!!!
Now I really want to read “If Simon Amstell were your boyfriend…”. 75% of it would have to involve sinks and effortlessly cool cardigans.
If Simon Amstell were my boyfriend, maybe I would probably stop confusing him with Jesse Eisenberg.
I love Simon more than most people, but I would genuinely never want to date him. I don’t think our anxieties would clash well.
OMG.
This is the first time someone’s said one of these that I actually actively want to read.
I read, and adore, all of these columns, but I never fully understood others’ visceral NEED for one until you said that.
I LOVE SUE! I’ve recorded back episodes of Just a Minute so I can fall asleep listening to her and Graham Norton banter about gardening and all kinds of rubbish. She’s a delight!
I just did a double take because I couldn’t remember commenting on this article when I’d only just read it.
Uh… never mind.
<3 JAM <3
http://tunein.com/radio/Just-A-Minute-Radio-s1633…
this is a radio station that only plays just a minute, all the way from the beginning.
You are doing good work.
AHHHHH THIS IS MY VERY FAVORITE ONE SINCE THE KRISTEN STEWART ONE
(what, I have a type, and also a gender preference)
you would never be the drunkest guest in attendance.
well, certainly not with THAT attitude
my dream would be: you will always be the drunkest guest in attendance, but no one ever notices.
WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE, SUE PERKINS IS MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE. I would say that I’ve spent too much life my life searching Youtube for clips of her and listening to any program on BBC Radio 4 that she guest stars on, but there is really not an amount of time that is too much to spend on that.
Have you all seen Maestro? She’s BRILLIANT.
I have written a starring role for her in my sitcom, no joke. That has nothing to do with Maestro, just… I do adore her. Every “Just a Minute” performance is a treasure.
If Sue Perkins were your girlfriend, she would reinact that bit where she conducted the Simpsons overture, while making exaggerated faces while you giggle uncontrollably.
An Esther Coren shoutout! How exciting!
Seriously, though, if you haven’t read Recipe Rifle and you like self-deprecating rambling AND cooking, you should totally get on there.
This. Love Esther, although her privilege sometime irks me.
I love everyone who has ever appeared on QI.
Same, except for Johnny Vegas and Jeremy Clarkson.
I love QI so much the theme song is my ring tone, and I change it to the christmas special theme for the holidays
Jimmy Carr’s laugh makes me want to stab my eardrums out with a screwdriver. And excepting Jeremy Clarkson. But yes! Bill Bailey in particular.
Hate to say, but Stephen Fry is kinda awful.
TW: rape “joke”
He wrote and recited a limerick about child abuse as a closing joke for QI. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/aug/29/step…
He wrote about how women are all supposedly frigid and only use sex to manipulate men, tried to pass it off as a joke, then made it clear it’s what he actually believes. http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/nov/0…
He also said that dreadful quote about being offended which I can’t be arsed to look up, but which is every FREEZE PEACH sea lion bore’s favourite saying. And could only have been said by someone immensely privileged.
He’s good at crinkly-eyed smiles, it’s true. But the rest… sorry 🙁
If Sue Perkins were my girlfriend I would never leave the fucking house (except to receive pizzas from the delivery guy).
"…an appalling and offensive racial change. Let me be clear: I rather like the idea of an Asian Watson, but American? God save us all."
I think it was meant to be a joke of 'look I'm saying something that will make you think I'm racist and don't like Asian Watson…OH NO WAIT it's actually American Watson I have a problem with! Lol got you there! Not really racist!' It's not funny and v. puerile. But I wouldn't describe it as 'straight-up racist'. Just crap and taking advantage of racial issues and prejudice in an insensitive and stupid way.