AA Gill, controversial novelist and columnist, boasts a long list of achievements - and a list of enemies to match. Born in Edinburgh in 1954, Gill is among Britain's highest paid columnists and shares a relationship with ex-model Nicola Formby, whom he describes as "the Blonde". Now fit and well, he successfully overcame alcohol dependency in his late 20s.
His TV and restaurant reviews for The Sunday Times have allowed him to act as a pundit-at-large. His feelings on Germany - "admit it - we all hate them" - annoyed the Germans. His comments about the Welsh - "stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls" - caused complaints to the Commission for Racial Equality. And his criticisms of top chef Gordon Ramsay led to Gill being ejected from Ramsay's fashionable Chelsea eatery. He also dubbed the Millennium Dome "obese and spotty", the Queen "middle-class" and on living outside London: "It's life, but it's 1972 life."
The Independent described his fiction as "hideously and unamusingly obscene" in a survey of the 20th century's worst novels. His latest novel was voted winner of the 'Bad Sex award' by the Literary Review.
