Gill's acerbic style led to several controversies and complaints from public figures during his career.
Wales In 1997, in
The Sunday Times, Gill described the
Welsh as "loquacious dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls". His comments were reported to the
Commission for Racial Equality and used as an example of what was described as "persistent
anti-Welsh racism in the UK media" in a motion in the
National Assembly for Wales. The CRE declined to prosecute, saying that Gill "had not meant to stir up racial hatred." Gill made further comments regarding the Isle of Man in his
Sunday Times column on 23 May 2010, when he described its citizens as falling into two types: "hopeless, inbred mouth-breathers known as Bennies" and "retired, small arms dealers and accountants who deal in rainforest
futures". His comments were made in the aftermath of
Mick Jagger's suggestion that drugs should be legalised in the Isle of Man. Gill added that "If ... they become a hopelessly addicted, criminal cesspit, who'd care? Indeed, who could tell the difference?"
England In February 2011, Gill described the county of
Norfolk as "the
hernia on the end of England". In December 2013, his column just before New Year's Eve, was the result of a night on the beat in
Grimsby and
Cleethorpes and was heavily critical of both towns where Grimsby is "on the road to nowhere" and Cleethorpes is full of "hunched and grubby semi-detached homes".
Humberside Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Grove described Gill as "A tweed-suited,
Mayfair-based writer, whose only experience of the North of England was his visit to Cleethorpes and his regular trips salmon fishing in Scotland".
Killing of a baboon Gill reported in his
Sunday Times column in October 2009 that he shot a
baboon dead, prompting outrage from
animal rights groups. "I know perfectly well there is absolutely no excuse for this", he wrote, and that he killed the animal to "get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger". He went on to state, "They die hard, baboons. But not this one. A
soft-nosed .357 blew his lungs out". Gill's
Sunday Times editor,
John Witherow, responded to Balding's complaint: "In my view some members of the gay community need to stop regarding themselves as having a special victim status and behave like any other sensible group that is accepted by society. Not having a privileged status means, of course, one must accept occasionally being the butt of jokes. A person's sexuality should not give them a protected status". The PCC considered publication of Gill's piece to be "an editorial lapse" for which "the newspaper should have apologised at the first possible opportunity".
Mary Beard Reviewing
Mary Beard's
BBC television series
Meet the Romans in April 2012, Gill wrote that the academic "should be kept away from cameras altogether". Beard in response accused him of being "frightened of smart women" and suggested "maybe it's precisely because he did not go to university that he never quite learned the rigour of intellectual argument and he thinks that he can pass off insults as wit." ==Personal life==