It’s penguin suit time tonight. The annual evening of backstabbing, fistfights, hypocrisy and prodigious drinking that is the Scottish Press Awards take place at a city hotel.
A brilliant piece of planning means that the good, the great and the greedy of Scottish journalism gather at 7 and there will be no food served until 9. I’d loved to have heard the discussion process on that one. “We’ll get them there at 7, have the awards and then a lovely meal at 9. What could possibly go wrong?”
Guess what this is a recipe for... take a large banqueting hall, add a couple of hundred Scots journalists, a few hundred bottles of wine, assorted beers and spirits, a two hour time frame, empty stomachs and a succession of deadly dull awards.
Got it? Yes, it’s a recipe for disaster. It will be carnage.
The last time I attended– the time after which I swore I’d never go again – I disgraced myself by asking a particularly irritating award winner outside to discuss the finer points of fisticuffs after he failed to respond to more gentle requests to shut up and go away. I rounded off the night by telling my editor exactly what was wrong with the newspaper and why most of it was his fault. I told him this despite him politely asking me not to on three occasions. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn’t.
Tonight there will pomposity, obsequiousness, aggression, drunkenness, more aggression and the inevitable bit of one two buckle my shoe. And then there will be food.
Tomorrow, bacon rolls and brown sauce. On prescription.
No comments:
Post a Comment