13 February 2014
The Coach and Horses in Soho hosted the annual Hatchet Job of the Year Award last night, for the most cutting literary review. The winner was AA Gill for his Sunday Times demolition of Morrissey’s autobiography. “A sea of Stygian self-justification and stilted self-conscious prose,” he wrote.
Taking a break from the party outside the pub were prize organisers Anna Baddeley and Fleur Macdonald, the Observer’s Lynn Barber and novelist Elizabeth Day. Meanwhile, Gill was inside talking up his job. “We’re culture’s traffic wardens,” he said. “Nobody likes it when they get a ticket but you’d bloody well notice if we weren’t there.”
His prize — a year’s supply of potted shrimp from The Fish Society.
