Books and Bookers

What is the greatest prize in writing?  Obviously, it’s making enough money from selling your writing to enable you to do a couple of hours scribbling in the morning and then slope off for lunch and legitimately describe everything that happens after that as ‘research’. 

There are other, more formal examples such as the Nobel prize for literature, the Golden Dagger award for mystery writing, the Daily Mail Letter of the Day for the most Frothingly Insane Rant About Gypsies, the Orange prize for jolly well having a bash at trying to be as good a writer as a chap and, the daddy of them all, the Booker!

The Booker prize has traditionally fulfilled two functions, first it tells the sort of people who only read one book a year what book to read this year, and second, because it’s televised, it confirms everyone’s prejudices about the publishing industry, that it’s full of people who talk too much and only stop talking when they are drinking.

Publishing is changing.  You no longer have to have your manuscript rejected by hundreds of publishers to feel belittled and crushed.  On-line publishing means that you can make your writing available for free and you can feel belittled and crushed directly by the public, cutting out the middleman and moving straight to ‘bitter’ without ever having passed ‘success’.  Of course, anyone truly unsuccessfully dedicated to their art will describe their writing as ‘difficult’ and themselves and ‘misunderstood’.  These people can often be seen smoking furiously and, in their weaker moments, wondering if they should just sell out and write something commercial that involves handcuffs and things being pushed up people’s bottoms – so that’s either erotic fiction or crime writing then.

It’s good to see that travel writing and biography have their own prizes and that writers of non-fiction get recognition, especially when the book recognised is not, for instance, written by a comedian taking a ‘sideways’ look at the people of Mongolia – the only time a writer should take a sideways look at anything is when they are stretched out on the pub carpet.

But perhaps prizes for fiction writing are, to a certain extent, unnecessary.  The measure of a success of any book is going to be the amount it sells.  The measure of the popularity of any book is going to be the numbers it sells week on week and the measure of the worth of any book is surely if people are reading it years from now. 

What prizes for fiction allow is a panel of judges to have the opportunity to advise us that the corking novel that we really enjoyed, enthralled us, kept us up nights and transported us more effectively than that economy class flight it made bearable, the same novel we recommended to all out friends and bought for family members was, in fact, too shit to even make this year’s longlist and what we should have been reading was the one about the depressed piano tuner with the difficult relationship with his mother and which does not have a happy ending at all and is very, very unlikely to ever be made into a film as the scene with the lobsters will never get past the censors.
How great then, to see Hilary Mantel win the Booker Prize this year, winning it for the second time, for the second book in a trilogy, which just like the first is a bestseller.  The sheer bloody balls it must have taken the judges to go with a populist choice that is already on the Ikea coffee tables of many people, that is popular with readers, and that in paperback form will be a pleasingly hefty beach read when on holiday and handy for twatting mosquitoes.

Prizes shouldn’t matter, but as long as we have them, who they are given to does.  The reality is that awards will always be with us, from the best in breed in the fat pigs class at the local agricultural show to the Golden Thingie award for best actor.

And really, who of us can truthfully say that offered a rosette and a ten quid book token, we’d turn it down?

G&P Awards - Sport

Sportsman of the year – it’s been a great year for sport, as long as you were not an England rugby fan. 2011’s World Cup saw the unnatural prospect of having to watch a rugby match with a cup of tea rather than a beer, then saw the startling development that you can drink beer first thing in the morning, it’s actually just social convention that frowns upon it. The tricky think was to get out of the habit when the World Cup ended, but after a few days most of us were back to nursing a beaker of coffee on the train rather than a can of Harp. While the rugby team were rather better at throwing dwarfs than the ball, there were notable successes in other fields, with records set in badger baiting and deer chasing. However, the award has to go to Richard Carello, the jockey who distinguished himself this year at meet at Chepstowe by starting on one horse and, when it started flagging, tossing another jockey off of a neighbouring horse and winning the race on his horse-jacked mount. Caarello was, quite properly, disqualified for improper use of the whip in unseating the other jockey.

G&P Awards - Science and Technology

Innovation of the year – iSay! There was much excitement in the offices of G&P when ‘smartphones’ where introduced. This excitement was diminished when one actually started using one. They did not, it appears, automatically mute themselves during Opera. Nor did they automatically ring with an urgent, not to be ignored tone during the interminable second act of ‘De Fingermaus’, allowing one to slip away from the box and test the service at the bar. Worst of all, they did not self-erase browsing history or scramble text messages from annoyed mistresses. What, was the collective opinion, is so f**king smart about that? This all changes with the introduction of ‘apps’, an acronym of A Perfect Procrastination Solution, they are indeed supreme at wasting time. Previously, the staff of G&P thought angry birds were the ones one clipped but did not kill on a shoot, instead it turns out to be either a way for your sullen child to while away that difficult lunch when you tell him he can’t come home from Christmas after all because Daddy’s new wife does not like the way he looks at her in the hot tub, or you to while away the time during any meeting featuring a powerpoint slide with the word ‘vision’ on it. Occasionally though, there is a useful app. Such an app is iSay. iSay is an English translation app. Unlike other translation apps, that spits out tinny mechanised unintelligible versions of ‘can you show me the way to the nearest lavatory that features a Sturley and Armington flush mechanism’ and other phrases that one clearly needs abroad, it turns your phone into a PA system while at same time printing the message, dot matrix style, on the screen. So for instance, if one types in ‘would you mind awfully advising me where the railway station is please?’ it turns it into English Abroad: ‘WHERE. IS. RAILWAY. STATION!’ Now, this is doing nothing one cannot do oneself, but the clever bit is if one is having trouble being understood, one hits ‘repeat’ and gets, in this instance: ‘RAILWAY. STATION.’ ‘CHUFF CHUFF, YOU KNOW, THAT WE BUILT’ ‘Oh for fuck’s sake’. And thence on to the inevitable scuffle, local law enforcement involvement and appearance of British consulate. The G&P staff have used this in Wales and found it most effective.

G&P Awards - Food and drink

Restaurant of the year – Lots of competition this year, from places owned by celebrity chefs that, because the celebrity chefs are off filming, shagging or filming their shagging, are actually quite good, to Modern French, which is always quite bad, from places doing simple things well to places doing complicated things well to little places that just do the best red snapper straight out of the sea. G&P has catholic tastes. That’s why honourable mention goes to La Deedah, Anton Fircups new place in Knightsbridge, simply because one can order ‘vodka luge’ as a starter and, if you book ahead, the luge is in the form of a statue of yourself, with the vodka emerging from spigot of choice. Congratulations on Anton for scooping the ‘fist date venue’ award at last month’s ‘Grazia’ awards. But we also love the family run restaurant on the Greek island of Krappos. Their red snapper recipe, which has no red snapper in it at all, is much appreciated by any tourist staying for more than a week where, because of bountiful shoals and a truly buggered economy, red snapper if just about the only thing left to eat. The winner is ‘Lennies’ on the A437 just outside Macclesfield. This unpretentious layby café serves the best bacon sandwich in England, meaning the best in the world. Lidl bacon on supermarkert value white means that the bacon grease is half way to your elbow before you have the sandwich half way to your mouth. What sets this bacon sandwich apart is the particulates from all the lorries trundling past. Try the ‘asthma attack on a plate’ the next time you are there.

Food of the year – hot scotch egg. Of course.

Drink of the year – tea. Yes, that’s right, tea. Here’s why: Beer is your go-to drink when you are feeling thirsty or it is still first thing. Red wine is fine but needs a decent roast dinner to go with it and one does not always have access to an Aga, a cook or a decent fowl. White wine used to have a reputation as being drunk by the rougher sort of homosexulaist. Now it has the reputation of being drunk by ‘Lambrini girls’. Until it is rehabilitated and it is safe to once again drink with the rougher sort of homosexulaist, it is off the list. Gin is all very well, in its place. That place is the bathtub where it is distilled and where it can also be pressed into service as dissolving evidence. Scotch is an alcohol beverage perfected by a race who have brought the abuse of their own bodies to a fine art. Think; if you wouldn’t have a piercing, a tattoo or a deep-fried mars bar inside you, why would you have any other tartan product? Other drinks are available but frankly, they are all variations on the above. Cocktails? Any of the above with enough vimto to disguise the taste. This leaves us with tea. Because; there’s a ‘phone ringing, in the White House, at two o’clock in the morning and if there’s a crisis brewing there had better be a cuppa brewing as well, when you are taking a decision about whether or not to deploy the special forces in a supposedly allied country, you do not want to be doing this with a beaker of Jim Beam in your mit, you want hot, fresh tea. And as we have been asked, the G&P blend of choice is English Breakfast with half a spoonful of camp coffee, a pinch of an OXO cube and just enough Bovril to give the beverage body. And three sugars.

G&P Awards - Culture

Book of the year – ‘Only to be published in the event of my death’ by Christopher Hitchens is probably the most eagerly anticipated book in the Groucho Club, but in an otherwise rather dry year for publishing, where rumours of a hitherto undiscovered Stig Lasson pop-up book for children proved groundless the publishing event of the year was the publication, finally, of the last ‘Bellamy’ novel, many years after the death of the author of the Bellamy books, Deirdre ‘Dash’ Flintlock, RN. The discovery of the completed manuscript and its eventual use in the settlement of Flintlock’s estate by having one copy each sent to Flintlock’s creditors in full and final settlement was a unique approach to distribution and debt settlement. Given their relative rarity, even with the some-seventy copies that were sent to various wine merchants and pub landlords, the copies now trade hands at inflated sums, with anyone in possession of a copy of ‘Bagpipes point the way’ declaring it if not the greatest Bellamy story, then at least the equal of ‘The clockwork clergyman’, ‘Fear in the mobile library’ and even the accepted defining Bellamy novella; ‘The Smack of Skull on Willow’. Having been lucky enough to receive a copy in settlement of a debt as a result of a sporting bet (the same bet, ironically, that led to Flintlock’s untimely demise and the resulting ‘chamois leather affair’), G&P’s literary editor can confirm that in his final days, Flintlock was drinking heavily, smoking illegally and writing divinely.

Film of the year – the biggest story in film in 2011 year was that George Lucas did not release another edit of ‘Star Wars’. Possibly the campaign by fans to write down and then send Mr Lucas their most beloved childhood memories so that he can wipe his arse on them and send them back, forever corrupted, has ensured that he can now do this one a singular basis and no longer feel the need to do it collectively while at the same time destroying one of the best movies ever made. For G&P though, one film was worthy of special attention. Showing only in the small mobile cinema that travels round the few remote Scottish islands that do not consider cinema as witchcraft, the restored 1930’s documentary ‘Och Thatll Da’ (‘The Day the Herring Came’) is a silent, Celtic language, black and white documentary about the herring industry in 1930s Scotland. Unflinching in its depiction of fishing, gutting and the wearing of Fair Isle jumpers, for years the film was banned in certain parts of the world for its depiction of beards. Now though, with a new soundtrack by Philip Glass, the famous scenes such as the herring landing, the seagull attack and the infamous ‘two women go at each other with herring knives in a dispute over either a woodbine or a bloke, I can’t be too sure but Christ, she’s now topless and the other one is trying to drown her in a barrel of herring guts this is just wrong’ scene really have stood the test of time. The film, of course, went on to win the Golden Herring in Iceland as well as renewed bans in the sort of countries that have yet to accept Christ as their redeemer.

Television programme of the year – TOWIE, I’m a celebrity (note: check trades description act, benchmark: Su Pollard), the return of Big Brother. This really has been the year of ‘reality’ television. With budgets for scripts and high production values dwindling, the temptation to blow the budget on fake tan and hope for a double-page splash in ‘Heat’ was obviously tempting in 2011. A reality check on reality television this year came when one could not distinguish the ‘Iceland’ adverts that ran throughout ‘I’m a Celebrity’ from the show itself, because the people appearing in both were about as ‘famous’ as one another, and Iceland’s party platter looks like a bush tucker trial. Luckily, it wasn’t all dross. The CCTV and home-video-camera footage from the Derbyshire estate of the Eighth Duke of Monmouth’s of his gamekeepers’ seasonal battle with the poachers on the estate was perhaps the most compelling television seen on British screens for some years. Grainy, sometimes silent, occasionally narrated by either the clipped tones of a gamekeeper or the slurred voice of a poacher speaking around either a swollen mouth or a head injury, the series had many compelling moments, many of them in green night vision. Many of us learned, for the first time, that red arterial spray looks quite, quite black on light-sensitive camera. As well as the human characters – the gamekeepers such as Fowkes, Fellows, Mobb, the magnificently whiskered ‘Normal’ and of course the poachers; Scumm, Viles and ‘Agggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhmyleg’ there were animal characters, ‘Badgie’ the badger, ‘Dearie’ the dear and ‘Shipman’ the Staffordshire Bull Terror. Wonderfully anchored by Kate Humble, this was, to put it bluntly, worth the price of the license fee alone and in the G&P office gave rise to the catchphrase ‘Frozen Planet – you can stick penguins up your arse’. Not true, by the way.

Awards, rewards, honours and disgraces - people of the year

It’s traditionally still just about the time of year where there are reviews of the past twelve months, and awards and honours are handed out to those that have made a positive contribution to society in general or the lives of the rich and influential in particular.

Here at G&P we, perhaps ironically, perhaps not, take a more egalitarian view about who and what should get an award or, shall we say, recognition. We are always pleased when somebody is honoured for outstanding contributions to the world of science, medicine or just having great hair, but do feel a little uncomfortable at the meaner awards and recognitions handed out by those who want to throw a spotlight on badness. This year, in particular, no such spotlight was needed, as bad behaviour was exposed in the full light of day.

So, in no particular order, the G&P awards for people of 2011 are:

Man of the year – lots of competition here, mainly in the shape of dead tyrants and terrorists who’s passing made the world either a better or simply a better groomed place. But without doubt G&Ps man of the year is Sconald MacDoon, the genius Glaswegian chef d’celebe who this year introduced the world to the hot scotch egg, a core of piping hot haggis surrounded by an egg, surrounded by whatever the hell it is that surrounds a scotch egg, and deep fried. The science has something to do with using the same technology that allows egg to be placed inside square pork pie and we understand that the hot scotch egg is to be official snack of the CERN team for 2012. Official snack for 2013 – Rennies.

Woman of the year – again, a year where women took centre stage, be it in CCTV footage showing a cat being placed in a wheelie bin (much more entertaining was the footage of the enraged cat being released) or Rebekka Brooks showing that you didn’t need to be smart or good looking in order to edit a national paper, all you needed was a readership slightly dimmer than you are. But the G&P woman of the year is Delcasier Fernandez, the Chipping Hombury housewife who, after a three year battle with her local council to have the street lights stay on longer and later to make the streets of her village safer for women, finally threw in the towel and instead opened a taser shop in the village. Sales have been brisk and in just three short weeks two flashers and a bloke who was out late hoping to see owls have been tasered in the goolies.

Animal of the year – while wheelie bin cat and Fenton (or to give him his full Kennel Club name ‘Fenton Fenton Jesus Christ Fenton Fenton Jesus Christ’) snatched headlines, G&P prefers to recognise working animals, be they the sniffer dogs that protect our troops in foreign parts, gun dogs of a different type that bring back the bird after a shoot, faithful hounds that savage hunt saboteurs or the weapon dogs that guard their masters’ crack dens. This year’s animal of the year is the regimental goat adopted by the Second Afgan Regiment of Foot as their mascot who, thanks to being tethered too close to a field kitchen one evening, was not just a source of regimental pride but also a sauce of regimental pride as, thanks to a bit of a cock-up in the catering department, ‘Belzie’ was served up as the winning dish in the regimental Masterchef cook-off the next day. Recipe available at www.passthesalt.co.af