Well, I have continued my record of never having won anything in my life, beyond a few £50 premium bonds! At the Orwell prize last night, the blog prize went to the Nightjack blog. He's real life police detective and writes an excellent blog about police matters, although he often strays wider than that. Because he writes anonymously, he couldn't be there, but it was good to see Andrew Sparrow, Alix Mortimer and Chekhov from Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness.
When you are nominated for an award and they're just about to announce the winner, you are very conscious of people looking at you to gauge your reaction if you don't win. If you smile too much you know people will be thinking you're putting on a brave face, yet if you don't people think you're a bad loser. So I made sure I stood right at the back of the room, out of sight!
As my mother always told me, it's not the winning that matters, it's the taking part. Of course, she was talking bollocks. What's the point of taking part unless you'd like to win?!
No doubt it will have given certain people huge pleasure that I didn't win, but actually, any of the six blogs would have been a worthy winner in my view, and I repeat the sincere congratulations I offered to Nightjack last night. His blog illustrates the variety and quality that exists in the British political blogosphere. And it is a mark of the man that he has donated his winnings to a Police Benevolent Fund. Good on him.
