Restaurant critic AA Gill has become the latest writer to face the fury of Twitter users after writing about how he shot a baboon on safari "to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone".
In a Sunday Times article on October 25 purportedly reviewing The Luxe - the Edinburgh-born writer himself noted that “any connection between the wildlife in this column and this week’s restaurateur is purely coincidental” - Gill recounted in graphic detail how he shot the creature from 250 yards while hunting in "a truck full of guns and other blokes" in Tanzania.
AA Gill’s name is now one of the trending topics on Twitter, referring to the terms most mentioned in people’s Tweets, many users berating the writer and comparing his sudden infamy to that of Jan Moir, who was widely criticised for a Daily Mail article about Stephen Gately.
Gill said in the piece: “If you tool around the beautiful and unruly bits of Africa long enough in the company of gangs of men in purposeful hats, sooner or later you’re going to do baboon.”
He went on to say: “I wanted to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger. You see it in all those films: guns and bodies, barely a close-up of reflection or doubt. What does it really feel like to shoot someone, or someone’s close relative?”
His article drew fury from wildlife experts. Claire Bass, wildlife manager at the World Society for the Protection of Animals, told The Guardian: "It's hard to say what's sadder - the unnecessary death of a healthy baboon or that he has so little regard for the life of another creature.
“The vast majority of visitors to the Serengeti have a fantastic time shooting with cameras, not guns. We condemn the killing and the crude portrayal of it as 'entertainment' in Gill's column."
Moir caused controversy with an article on October 16 which online had been entitled "Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death". The PCC are currently investigating the piece after receiving thousands of complaints, including from the singer's record label.
The columnist has since publicly apologised to Stephen Gately's family and friends for the timing of her column about the Boyzone singer, though defended her use of the word "sleazy" to describe the circumstances of his death.
