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Nor would I have seen the pictures the viewers didn’t – glimpses of the gritty real life of your everyday Booker banquet. Distinguished diners sat beneath distinguished portraits, scoffing what looked like a distinguished di
I looked along the bank of monitors. On one a scatter-haired writer, mouth open and full, stopped short as she stared into a camera that must have seemed to jump out of the beef Wellington. ‘That one,’ I said. ‘No,’ said Ros, as the camera pa
‘I know all about independents,’ I said, ‘My Islington terrace is full of them. They set up little companies with five-pound bank loans and then work up series costing eight million. They send a treatment to Cha
Ros nudged me in the upper thigh. ‘Ready, steady, here he is,’ she said. And there – right in the middle of the main monitor – I was, just like Mrs Dalloway at her party. Except somehow I seemed to be not quite I, but some terrible yet oddly accurate simulacrum. Thanks to modern technology I had become a long green banana, rocking on my heels and talking interminable tosh. My body was transformed, my thoughts rendered outrageous, my ma
Onscreen the greatest night in the life of modern literature continued. There were dramatized extracts from the six chosen novels, all shot in the same children’s sandpit off Shepherd’s Bush Green which, decked out with a beach umbrella or two, easily stood in for Deauville in belle époque 1913. There was a studio discussion with Germaine Greer and others, all of whom I was decidedly worse than. The Chairman of the Booker company rose and introduced the Chairman of the Booker judges. He took the microphone, briefly dismissed the state of the novel (though more effectively than I had), then went on to discuss the works of Tom Paine, the celebrated Thetford staymaker and political radical. This led him to some long reflections on the American War of Independence, on which he was plainly an expert. It was as I sat there, hoping that some crisis would occur that would drive my own contribution into insignificance, that I realized there was deep tension in the sca
Suddenly, prodded violently from behind, the Chairman halted, midway through the Battle of Saratoga, and gulped the name of the wi
Credits rolled, and Ros banged her fist furiously on the console. ‘Oh God, no interview, and we didn’t even hear her name properly,’ she cried, ‘Did anyone hear her name? Or which book?’ ‘Thank you very much,’ I said, ‘I’m going.’ Ros looked up. ‘Thank you, darling,’ she said, ‘You were the best thing in the whole damned programme. And you were frigging terrible.’ No more television, I thought, as I hurried back to the bright Guildhall through pouring rain, I’ll stick to the real world of books and print. But when I reached the great Banqueting Hall, I discovered a curious sight. The di