Talk:Jay Rayner/GA1

GA review

Passed. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:50, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Nominator: Launchballer (talk · contribs) 17:16, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist (talk · contribs) 21:53, 1 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have a look at this. I'm not an expert by any means, but did enjoy when he used to present Out to Lunch.

I did say the rest were advisory, and I stand by that -- so will pass the article now. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 19:50, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Initial comments

Most of these are more-or-less advisory for GA:

He spent a few months there as its diary correspondent: I had no idea what this was, so I followed the link -- he's not much help, but he does call it a diary columnist there. Apparently this is a sort of "news-that's-not-news" column that's now mostly dead, so I think columnist is the right word -- a correspondent is based somewhere or has a particular purview to report on something.

Changed.--Laun chba ller 15:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

He became a restaurant critic in 1999 and developed a reputation for acerbity in his columns, with several going viral including a takedown of Paris restaurant Le Cinq: I don't know if we've got the sources to actually say this, but it does strike me that he was beavering away for about a decade and a half before any of the virality happened.

Couldn't find a source to that effect, will happily add if you do.--Laun chba ller 15:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I might need a bit of persuading that "Beard of the Year" deserves to be in a list of awards, but I'm very open to that persuasion.

I also think it's borderline and have moved it to prose.--Laun chba ller 15:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Among his works during this period was an Esquire piece co-written with his wife about their fertility troubles. He also spent time as a sex columnist for Cosmopolitan before returning to The Observer in 1996 as a generalist, by which time he had married Pat Gordon-Smith: the wife in the Esquire piece was Gordon-Smith, as the source makes clear. Advise reordering to put the marriage first.

I named Gordon-Smith at the end of the previous paragraph.--Laun chba ller 15:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I would make clear that they had married -- currently she goes from "his future wife" to "his wife", but we don't actually name her on the second occasion, and people often have more than one spouse over their lives. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:32, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In general, British style doesn't capitalise The in a title of a newspaper, band etc in running text where the "the" could otherwise form part of the sentence: so "he was a columnist for the Observer" is preferred to "He was a columnist for The Observer". NB however that "the station's food panel programme The Kitchen Cabinet" is correct.

Changed the newspapers, have left the programmes and books - let me know if I've misinterpreted.--Laun chba ller 15:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My Last Supper (2019) used the question to explore his food past: used which question?

Of his last supper. I've added a wikilink to last meal.--Laun chba ller 15:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Media

One image (File:Jay Rayner 20191205.jpg), taken by a Wikimedian and appropriately CC licensed. Not strictly required for GA, but beneficial for accessibility, would be an alt text with a physical description, for the benefit of those using screen readers.

The quote box serves the same function as media, so I'll include it here. I would give some context to his ("as reported by ABC News in 2017") -- it's not clear from the source how far these are something Rayner offered versus an idea the interviewer had and asked him to provide. Or are these the chapter titles from his book?

Chapter titles from his book.--Laun chba ller 15:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would make that clear in the citation. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:32, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sourcing

Perhaps inevitably, most of the sources are journalism. Some are skating right up to the line of WP:RS -- for instance, our citation of the Enfield Independent (local news) for the "Acid Rayner" nickname. More generally, a lot of local news, which is at best a bit sketchy for WP:NEWSORG. One or two very uncontroversial claims (edit: actually, eventually, quite a lot of the article) are sourced to Rayner himself, but this is fine under WP:ABOUTSELF given that they are generally low-stakes and "laundered" through publications who ought to have fact-checked them (and indeed they're often the sort of claims that could easily be checked, such as which TV show he presented with whom). At the moment I'm generally happy, given that this is GA and not FAC: I think the sources are good enough for the weight they're being asked to bear.

Spot checks:

Note 6: He claimed in April 2016 to have auditioned for, and had a "very lucky escape" from, an unsuccessful ITV cooking competition co-produced by Optomen that UKGameshows identified as Food Glorious Food -- the source says this was Britain's Best Dish, not Food Glorious Food.

Rayner's claim in the Radio Times piece that Britain's Best Dish is a show "Simon Cowell's company did [...] with Optimum" that "died on its feet" is demonstrably wrong on multiple counts (see both our articles). This was actually missing a source, which I added, but given that SyCo have only done one cooking show I could probably get away with quietly getting it right per WP:WSAW?--Laun chba ller 15:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WSAW is an essay, and even then, "quietly get it right" only works when other, better sources are right -- not when all the sources are wrong. UKGameshows.com looks like, at least in part, user-generated content (see here) -- what makes it a reliable source? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:35, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Found to be fine for opinions at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 375#UKGameshows.com for reviews and opinions, and there's an analysis of its coverage at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/UKGameshows.com (3rd nomination) that suggests it passes WP:USEBYOTHERS, but out of an abundance of caution I've cut the claim.--Laun chba ller 18:08, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

8a, 8b and 8c: check fine. Some of the phrasing is pretty close, but that's not always avoidable given that Rayner isn't always being overly clear (which student newspaper did he edit?), so we have to stick closely to what he actually said.
Note 11: checks (the source is Rayner, but presumably this is in the public record and would be easy enough to verify)
Note 15a and 15b: checks, though see caveat about sequencing above.
Note 16: as for 11, except the interviewer seems to have done that bit of research himself.
Note 30: pretty much there, but the source describes it "as an art history-cum-romantic thriller" [sic], which isn't quite a "romance novel". I haven't read it, so take no position, but whatever we say should have a source behind it.

Changed it to thriller. What else is needed for GA @UndercoverClassicist:?--Laun chba ller 15:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The sourcing question above is mission-critical; the rest advisory but, at least in my view, very much worth doing. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:36, 2 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The following are optional for GA, but advisory:

Consider standardising formatting -- e.g. ISSNs or no ISSNs, sentence case versus title case in article headings.
Note 40: the writer's name isn't "Guest Writer" -- it's Matthew Bell. In fact, note 11 and note 40 are the same, so I would merge them: let me know if you want a hand with the practicalities.
Ditto Note 30 ("Gazette, Press") and 62 ("Times, the Sunday").
Dashes in titles (like "Interview – Jay Rayner praises...") should be endashes (–) not hyphens (-).
Note 16: you could credit the author (Angela Cole). Ditto note 24 (James McAllister).

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.