A brief history of James Corden’s most evil and awful moments

He’s the UK’s very own exported ick for christ’s sake!


James Corden is in a category of British men who the general public cannot stand. We seethe seeing his name in headlines and we roll our eyes every single year when he’s brought out for big charity televised events around Christmas time.

For the majority of us, we first met James Corden when he played Smithy in Gavin and Stacey. On reflection, Smithy was a moron but also a pretty loveable guy who was also half of the nation’s most iconic situationship of all time. So to some extent we have to be thankful to James Corden for giving us Smithy and the world’s best sitcom. But that’s where his career highlight ends. He has since moved to America and became the UK’s very own exported ick.

After years of being called out for being an idiot, people are finally sticking it to the man and he’s being named and shamed for being a clown. He was banned from Balthazar, a restaurant in New York, after allegedly being “abusive” to the servers. One day later though and he’s “apologised profusely.” This isn’t the first time since he was called out though – so here’s a brief history of James Corden being awful:

Horne and Corden was nothing but tragic lad banter

In 2018, James Corden addressed his infamous Horne and Corden sketch which featured Horne playing an overly camp TV presenter. The show was pretty short-lived after being slammed by the LGBTQ+ community. It was full of shit lad banter, the sort of jokes you’d hear 15-year-old boys laugh at in the school playground.

James Corden apologised for his Harvey Weinstein joke

In 2017, James Corden said he was “truly sorry” for his jokes about Harvey Weinstein after two of the women who accused Weinstein of rape condemened the joke. In footage from the event, you can literally hear the audience groan as James says the night in LA is “so beautiful, Harvey Weinstein has already asked tonight up to his hotel to give him a massage.”

He mocked Asian cuisine back in 2016

In an episode of “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts” James Corden mocked Asian and Filipino cuisine. In a video from 2016, James and Jimmy Kimmel are heard describing foods found in Chinese and Filipino restaurants as “terrible” and “disgusting”. At the time there was even a petition which acquired over 47,000 signatures requesting James changes the name of his segment or stops filming it altogether.

At one point James admitted his inflated ego caused him to seek professional help

In 2020, James Corden told The New Yorker he became “intoxicated” with his new celebrity status after the Gavin and Stacey success. He claims he began to behave like a “brat” and people called him out on it so as a result he had therapy. Look I think therapy is great but this is wild, right??

Now back to it! He has awful movies that even he doesn’t want to see

Cats. James Corden played Bustopher Jones in Cats and even though he didn’t say he regrets being involved – he also admitted it’s unlikely that he would ever watch the film himself. Big yikes!

His mask has slipped a couple of times

If there’s one thing James Corden is good at it’s keeping his mask on and appearances clean. To loads of people, he is a loveable guy and just another funny British man. But there have been times, one of them recently with the Balthazar restaurant drama, where his mask has slipped and an arrogance was on show.

Carpool Karaoke is evil

He sings badly and too loudly. Let me hear the professionals for christ’s sake!

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