The Greatest Insult of All-Time
When you Google "The Late Late Show," the search engine lets you know that many people wonder if it's even still on. As far as we're concerned, no, it ended when Craig Ferguson left
By Roger Cormier
The Late Late Show with James Corden host James Corden was in the news this week. For being a jerk. Again. He was banned from the Nolita restaurant Balthazar by its owner, Keith McNally. McNally called Corden "a tiny cretin of a man" when outlining two instances when the comic was "extremelty nasty" and yelled "like crazy" because some egg white mixed with egg yolk. Decent burn, but not the greatest insult of all-time.
So Twitter dug up the airplane story. You know the airplane story right? A woman with a crying baby was placed next to Corden about half an hour into a flight going from NYC to London. At first Corden seemed like a cool dude, putting on headphones and going to sleep. Get ready for a plot twist. You ready? You don't seem ready. Okay…so when they landed, the "clearly frazzled" woman handed the kid to the tiny cretin and yelled, “For fuck’s sake, can you at least hold the baby while I get the bags down?”
The woman was his wife. The baby was his.
It reminded me of two things. One was the time James Corden decided to fuck around with Reddit and he found out. In one of the more disastrous AMAs ever, a discussion with Corden and some of his writers, promoting a special, turned into most of the upvoted comments to be questions asking why he had the reputation of being an asshole. One redditor asked if it was true if Corden "acts like a massive bell end" to anyone who isn't famous. Corden only ended up answering three questions, none of which was about his personality.
The other thing was what British comic Stewart Lee said about Corden back in 2016. That happened to be the year I got to know Lee through his show, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, the third season and the third season only of which was on Netflix at the time. He made endless fun of unfamiliar folks to me, an uncultured American, such as Boris Johnson. In a one-minute clip on YouTube from the fourth season of his show, Lee goes after Corden. The video has over 242K views. It ends with what I believe to be the greatest insult of all-time. It's even better than calling someone a "medium talent.”
He starts, *starts*, with this:
I don't know James Corden personally, right, but he's always going on in interviews about how brilliant he thinks I am….And the feeling is not reciprocated.
Ouch.
In reference to Corden moving from England to the United States to host The Late Late Show:
Britain's loss is America's loss as well.
Then:
He's there clapping away, James Corden. Honestly if you Google James Corden and my name, you find all these interviews of people going to him, "What's your favorite thing?" "Oh Stewart Lee, he's brilliant." Trying to make out he's clever.
And then the kill:
Imagine James Corden watching *me*. Like a dog listening to classical music.
Complete with a depiction of a dog doing just that:
Can you imagine if someone you looked up to said this about yourself? Maybe it would lead you to, I don't know, become a cold-hearted monster who berated waiters and ignores spouses on airplanes. Villain origin story shit.
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