Police investigate Giles Coren over claims he verbally abused neighbour after row over parking outside his home
Giles Coren is being investigated by police over claims he verbally abused a neighbour after a row over parking outside his north London home, MailOnline can reveal today.
The fiery Times food critic is said to have confronted the woman after he was publicly accused of putting his car in a bay that had been suspended while it is prepared for a disabled neighbour.
Coren, 54, who blamed his wife and denied it was a disabled bay, was reported to the police after he allegedly visited the home of a resident on his street, who had posted the allegation about him online. Officers arrived and spent up to two hours with the alleged victim, MailOnline understands.
A Scotland Yard spokesman told MailOnline today: ‘Officers from Camden are investigating a suspected public order offence which took place in NW5 at around 11.20pm on Wednesday, October 11. There has been no arrest and inquiries are ongoing’.
Giles Coren is being investigated by police after allegedly verbally abusing a neighbour after he was accused of parking in a suspended bay outside his north London home
The Met did not name Coren, but MailOnline understands the investigation relates to the alleged altercation he had with his neighbour after a story appeared in the Daily Mail’s Eden Confidential column two days ago.
MailOnline has asked Mr Coren to comment.
Richard Eden shared Mr Coren’s emails with his Twitter followers
It came after it emerged the combustible Times columnist, son of satirist Alan Coren and brother of TV presenter Victoria Coren Mitchell, sent Mail journalist Richard Eden a string of abusive emails overnight and continued his rants on Twitter yesterday morning.
Mr Eden had written the original story about how Mr Coren was publicly accused of parking his car in a bay in north London that had been suspended while it is prepared for a disabled neighbour.
In emails to Mr Eden, which the journalist shared on Twitter, Mr Coren told him: ‘You are a despicable disgusting piece of s**t. You’re a lying conniving c**t. I hope you f***ing rot in hell’.
In a second email, sent just before 1am on Thursday morning and advising Mr Eden that lawyers were now involved, Mr Coren said: ‘I don’t know how that will go but I am f***ing coming for you. You sack of f***ing s**t’.
Twitter users confronted him over his abuse, making clear that it was not a proportionate response.
Journalist Mic Wright said: ‘I see Giles Coren is behaving in a typically Giles Coren manner’. Another Twitter user said: ‘Absolutely not shocked that Giles didn’t even comprehend the abusive emails were an issue or something he should apologise over’.
Mr Coren replied: ‘It’s not that. I knew what Mic was talking about. My issue was that I cannot do anything to change his (and many other people’s) opinion of me based on past offences, but that I do not want to be reviled by him for a new and terrible transgression of which I’m not guilty’.
Mr Coren also replied to Richard Eden’s tweets and said that ‘of course I’m abusing you’, accusing him of having ‘knowingly published lies about me and my family’.
Mr Eden vehemently denies his claims.
Giles Coren’s foul-mouthed and threatening emails to the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden
Mr Coren’s abuse has been questioned online
Another Twitter user suggested Mr Coren had been drunk when he sent the emails.
The food critic replied: ‘I appreciate your concern my friend. But I don’t really drink. Maybe once or twice a week at most. This man came after my family, to the door of my very home. He sent his minions to terrify my wife, those words were all I had to throw at him in my impotent rage and fear’.
His reaction came after the Mail was told of the row over parking in his north London street.
Writing on neighbourhood website Nextdoor, a woman made a string of allegations against Mr Coren, claiming: ‘You have repeatedly parked in a clearly marked suspended parking space on your street.
‘You know that the bay is suspended for a disabled neighbour of yours. Yesterday you parked in the bay again, which is stopping your disabled neighbour who also has disabled children from accessing their home safely.’
Mr Coren, 54, told the Mail: ‘It is not a disabled bay’, blaming his wife.
He said: ‘It is not a disabled bay. It is a general parking suspension. It was my wife’s car — she parked there and got a ticket. I have never parked there because I don’t like getting tickets.’
Giles Coren (right) at the Qasr Al Sarab hotel in Abu Dhabi for the BBC show ‘Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby’
His wife said she was unaware that the bay was suspended because it was designated for a disabled motorist, who had applied to the local council.
‘I parked there overnight,’ she said. ‘This street is normally chock-a-block. I didn’t look at the suspended sign because there are constantly suspensions, and you don’t pay attention to every single one. So it was a total error on my part.’
She added: ‘I am baffled and really distressed at her claims that we parked ‘repeatedly’ in a disabled bay, which we absolutely have not.
‘It was one single error. It’s so important to get along with everyone and it’s really distressing to have my neighbours think that I’m parking on purpose, repeatedly, in a disabled bay.’
The woman who applied for the disabled bay declined to comment on the online post.
Mr Coren, who has earned a reputation for losing his temper over the years, then launched the email attack on Mr Eden.
And it is not the first time he has reacted in that way.
In 2008 an email he wrote to staff at The Times was leaked to The Guardian. He was angry about how a restaurant review was edited. The sub-editor had removed an ‘a’ before the word ‘nosh’, sending him into a rage.
Mr Coren said: ‘Worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, s******* of all, you have removed the unstressed ‘a’ so that the stress that should have fallen on ‘nosh’ is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable… Can’t you hear? Can’t you hear that it is wrong?
‘It’s not f****** rocket science. It’s f****** pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and I have never ended on an unstressed syllable. F***, f***, f***, f***.’.
In 2010 he was condemned for posting violent comments on Twitter about his neighbour’s 12-year-old son.
Giles Coren’s tweets about a 12-year-old neighbour with a drum kit in 2010
The columnist vented his anger by suggesting the boy should be sexually assaulted and killed.
Coren tweeted from his home in north London, saying: ‘Next door have brought their 12-year-old son a drum kit.
‘For ****’s sake! Do I kill him then burn it? Or do I **** him, then kill him then burn it?’ He then followed this up with: ‘Child for sale, charred and partially ****ed. Has own drum kit.’
Later he posted a slight retraction, but not before his friends had added encouraging comments suggesting what to do to silence the neighbour’s budding musical talent.
He added the next day: ‘Oh hells’ bells. Look, can I just say I didn’t kill the kid, or have sex with him. and anyway he’s not real. and I live in Vienna.’ Asked whether he made the postings, Mr Coren replied: ‘Yes, but I don’t want to say anything about it.’
In 2021 Mr Coren’s north London house was daubed in graffiti and dog faeces – 24 hours after he allegedly deleted tweets apparently telling a Left-wing journalist to ‘f*** off to hell’ and calling her a ‘troll’ after she died suddenly at the age of 34.
Socialist writer Dawn Foster, who had epilepsy and a number of other health problems including a rare genetic disorder, passed away having spent time in hospital.
Earlier that week Mr Coren, whom Ms Foster accused of getting his job as a Times restaurant critic and columnist because of his father Alan, tweeted: ‘When someone dies who has trolled you on Twitter, saying vile and hurtful things about you and your family, is it okay to be like, ‘I’m sorry for the people who loved you, and any human death diminishes me, but can you f*** off on to hell now where you belong’?’
Mr Coren’s house in London daubed in graffiti paying tribute to Dawn Foster in 2021, after he was accused of telling the Left-wing journalist to ‘f*** off to hell’ and calling her a ‘troll’
Critics concluded this could only be about Ms Foster and screenshots widely shared on Twitter indicated that his first post was deleted and replaced with a rephrased version containing laughter, only for the second message to be removed completely later.
And amid the mounting backlash, including calls for The Times to sack him, the exterior of Mr Coren’s house in London was daubed in graffiti paying tribute to her, which read: ‘Dawn Foster Forever’.
A red heart was also drawn underneath and a bouquet of flowers. Dog faeces was also reportedly found.
In January this year Coren admitted he had done a ‘terrible thing on Twitter 18 months ago’.
He said: ‘I never apologised although I was sorry as hell and I wish I hadn’t done it’.
Source: Read Full Article
