Giving in to the bullies

The Man Booker committee has appointed Peter Stothard as the chairman of next year’s judges. What a dreary decision. I’ve nothing against Sir Peter Stothard; the TLS is a fine, upstanding publication — although whether it can be said to ‘zip along’ is a matter of taste.

No, it’s more that in picking someone so literary establishment, so safe, they’ve shown the bullies did get to them after all.

It’s like being teased at school for your pigtails, pretending you don’t care, then turning up the next day with a ponytail. Or a weak government U-turning on policy (to their credit, none of the Man Booker people has come out and tried to claim this year’s prize was in fact a consultation process with readers).

If only they’d been thick-skinned enough to carry on up the same celebrity tangent and gone for Richard and Judy or Jordan or Martin Amis. Or turned the whole thing into a BBC4 reality show called Booker Shore, where you could watch the judges arguing and getting off with each other in a big house in Hampstead.