TOP Award Michael Jecks055.jpg
Thanks to Sam Atkinson for this picture.
As you can see, the immediate result of not winning wasn’t actually a desire to cut both wrists. It is always really nice (I imagine) to win literary prizes – but it’s not the thing that really counts. The money helps, naturally, especially when you are a modern mid-lister, but the great thing about the Theakston’s is, it’s a prize in which the short list is selected by the public. Not by a clique of judges in a darkened room, but by real, genuine readers out there in the real world. That means that all of us who got to the short list were very happy that night. I certainly was, as you may be able to tell. Well, they did keep giving us pints of Old Peculier!