AA Gill: Racist gets off

Alas, AA Gill has been cleared of racial discrimination against Albanians by the compromised and hopeless Press Complaints Commission.

In the increasingly gaunt-looking Sunday Times Magazine - losing ads to the much better ST Style mag due to the latter's longer lead times - Gill had described Albanians as "short and ferret-faced, with the unisex, stumpy, slightly bowed legs of Shetland ponies." The PCC says that hacks can be robust and provocative, so that's all right then.

The Albanian complainant would have done better to take a long hard look at the person of Adrian Gill and tell us what hit his eyeballs. Having had the opportunity to observe Gill, the master of prose souffle, at close quarters, I can report the following: "An epicene failed male model pushing 50 with legs as thin as a dominatrix's rattan cane. Kate Moss would kill for pins such as his."

I particularly like Piers Morgan's observation of Gill "obsequiously smarming" around Madonna on one occasion. And his account of lunch with Gill's girlfriend, the journalist Nicola Formby, who showed him pornographic photos of herself cavorting naked on a bed. "You could see everything," said Morgan, "and the poses were explicit. Ms Formby sprawled here, Ms Formby's legs akimbo there, Ms Formby thrusting her bottom everywhere. She obviously thinks she's an absolute sex kitten, but I fear the mists of time have taken their toll a little too much."

I wonder who took the pics? I can't recall.