This is Ade's world. We're just living in it
Adrian Chiles is a vegan. He has a urinal in his flat and has written about the mixed reactions it receives.
At least, that's what his Wikipedia page states, which, in keeping with his weekly
Guardian column, has started to include increasingly bizarre aspects of his life since the TV presenter, best known for his spell on Match of the Day 2
and his time presenting
ITV's international football coverage, was handed a deal with the broadsheet paper in February 2019.
Since then, he has developed a cult-like following on social media, with people keenly waiting to see what banal aspect of his day-to-day life will get elevated into one of his weekly ramblings.
Did you know, for example, that he has a favourite spoon?
Well, he does, and he managed to carve out 600 words on it for one of his recent dispatches.
In it, he admitted to having "feelings" for his spoons and described himself as a "spoon lothario" for having too many, saying it was akin to "collecting notches on my bedpost, focusing on quantity rather than quality".
He also has a back-to-front West Brom tattoo that he "loves" and spent some time mulling over whether to download a pebble-identifying app – before concluding that "some stones should be left unturned".
https://twitter.com/andiefontaine23/status/1544768793896968195?s=20&t=-Djp1LfaVPCT01yu8O8cFA
None of this, certainly to those who indulge Charles, will come as a surprise.
After all, if you've heeded his warnings about hot tubs - "
A luxury spa is the wrong way to remember Dylan Thomas" - and read why lockdowns made it harder for him to
clean his teeth, then you are already irrecoverably hooked.
But what is genuinely shocking is how much you come to rely on his nonsensical ramblings as a sort of mindful retreat from the "daily cesspool of takes and terrible news", in the words of
GQ's Gabriella Paiella, who recently interviewed Chiles on how he comes up with his column ideas (usually out of ‘sheer desperation’,
he admitted).
But he rarely misses.
https://twitter.com/mattmillswrites/status/1451866474071666693?s=20&t=JY2Rrw1VnRabkld74KYmPQ
As Niall Anderson
wrote in
Gawker's 'King' series, the thing that holds all of his bizarre, disparate strands together is that "every step of the way, in almost every column, Chiles makes it clear that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
"This is what lifts him out of the common run of professional pundits. This is why he is beautiful. This is why Adrian Chiles will never be finished."
And he's right.
Chiles isn't out to hit a certain bar week-on-week. There is no bar, or if there is, he sets it.
As one Twitter user pointed out, not only his he "operating on a different astral plane from the rest of us, he's also spot on."
Most of us
do have a favourite spoon. We all found that lockdown interfered with our lives in funny ways, think a pebble app is probably an app too far and also agree that it is fundamentally right that a "posse" of lads definitely
are less intimidating when they wear manbags.
https://twitter.com/ru_m_shine/status/1521929983593226241?s=20&t=iHh0sZ-2vjDrcOsDVTTPeQ
It seems like, following a long and industrious broadcasting career, it was the secret diaries of Adrian Chiles aged 55 and a quarter that has cemented his position as one of the nation's foremost media personalities.
All hail the new kid on the block.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCqSM1YwtQo
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