Advice, Style

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

Dear Uncle,
I’m 17 and beginning to show signs of male-pattern baldness. My mates call me Wills. I laugh it off and pretend I don’t care, but I do. It’s so unfair. It saps my confidence. I laugh at men with comb-overs, but I’m beginning to brush my hair forward and wear little hats. Please, please tell me something useful, and don’t mention Yul Brynner. My stepmum and all her friends always say, “Look at Yul Brynner!” I’ve no idea who he is. Francis, by email  [Read more...]

Advice, Guest column

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

Mr Gill,
I’ve got this boyfriend, and on the face of it he ticks every box, some of them more than once. He’s good-looking, solvent with an indoor, sitting-down job. He’s got a car that’s insured, which is as rare as morris dancers round here. My family love him, and so do I. It’s all lush, until he opens his bleeding mouth. [Read more...]

Advice

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

Dear Adrian,

I’m just starting at a Southern uni. No one from my family, school or estate in the Northeast has ever been to university. I can handle the work. I get on with the other students. I’m not teased or bullied. I’m popular and everyone likes my accent. It’s all cool except I really can’t handle the dressing up. Why are middle-class, privately educated Southern kids so childishly obsessed with fancy dress? Every Friday night the town and campus looks like a cross between a hen night and MGM’s backlot. The streets are littered with vomiting bunnies and discarded togas. Every event comes with some embarrassing instruction to dress up as your favourite sin or an animal with the first letter of your name. Or there are instructions on what to arrive as, and then find your blind date who’ll be dressed as Wilma to your Fred, or Courtney at your Kurt. I’ve just had another one from my tutor that says, “Dress: smart-casual”. What the fuck is “smart-casual”? Come as an oxymoron? Clive, by email

[Read more...]

Advice

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

Uncle D,

What’s your position on pornography?
Ava, by email

Complaining about pornography is like moaning about the weather, though more fun, with better graphics. We are just surrounded by it. It’s bottomless, topless and endless. [Read more...]

Advice, Style

The Style Column – The corduroy conundrum

The Style Column – The corduroy conundrum

Esquire’s former-editor-turned-columnist Jeremy Langmead delivers some advice on how to wear corduroy. [Read more...]

Advice

AA Gill is Uncle Dysfunctional

AA Gill is Uncle Dysfunctional

Dear Uncle Dysfunctional,

It’s our one-month anniversary and I’m taking my girlfriend to Paris for the weekend. I want to give her some nice underwear for the occasion. I don’t know where to start. Help. Tom, Putney  [Read more...]

Advice, Style

The Style Column by Jeremy Langmead

The Style Column by Jeremy Langmead

Someone confided in me recently that this autumn is all about “Seventies luxe”. Although I nodded my head conspiratorially, I hadn’t a clue what they were on about. “Seventies luxe” sounds like something that might give you heartburn (acid reflux with flares). However, we’ve all got used to fashion designers plundering decades past and repackaging a period that we don’t recall as being particularly endearing in the first place, and the Seventies is definitely one of those. [Read more...]

Advice

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

AA Gill is Esquire’s Uncle Dysfunctional

Dear AA Gill,

My wife and I went on holiday with her family. Her younger sister came down to the pool wearing a tiny bikini. “Ooh,” I said, “that’s one for the wank bank.” I wasn’t really sure if I’d said it out loud. The wife went tonto. “Did you just say you wanted to masturbate over my sister?” I tried to explain the harmless concept of the wank bank, that all men have one. But she won’t let it go. She has to know who else is in it, and if she’s there. And every time we go to a restaurant or a pub she says, “I suppose she’s a deposit in your savings account.” Please help.

[Read more...]