Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Worth Every Penny of the License Fee

Congratulations to Aravind Adiga winner of the Booker Prize; not read it, not particularly interested in reading it, but same for the rest of this year's shortlist, so who knows? They may have found a gem. There's been plenty of meaningless discussion on the Guardian's book blogs, and various tit-for-tats. But my favourite comment was the one that said "of course it won, he's Indian, and it's got a tiger in it, one or the other improves your chance - but both..." (I paraphrase, but I thought it funny.)

I've been down and out with a cold these last few days, and so had the attention span of a ribena addict, so had forced myself to stay up at least till the Booker winner was announced. I've always enjoyed the pantomime of the Booker however hoary the plots and characterisation, yet the BBC long ago gave up on it. And last night they were worse than ever. Turning to the live performance on the 10.00 news, they stayed with it for 3 minutes, had an embarrassing cock-up when they got no sound from their reporter in the Guild Hall, ran the VT tape of the 6 books, and only just caught the announcement of the winner, before telling us to "catch more of the ceremony on BBC4"... they meant BBC News 24. And we pay the license fee for this?

Life, as they say goes on, though doubt I'll now make the opening of the literature festival tomorrow, even if I make it back on my feet. It's took me about two days to write this blog entry as it is - the soporific power of lemsip!

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