I got up earlier than usual today, and my brain isn't really talking to me, so blame it, not me, for what's being written here. I had nothing to do with it. My fingers are protesting at having to type these very words. There. You can't see it, but one of my hands just gave me the finger.
Yeah. Same to you, finger.
Anyway. It must be early, because this is a truly stupid idea, and also a really, really, really old one already far past its sell-by date. It's this: bring back Celebrity Big Brother, but give it a different name, put it on BBC4 and fill it with writers. Martin Amis, Jeanette Winterson, Kazuo Ishiguro, and whoever else you can think of. Lock them in there with access to only one manual typewriter and a limited daily allowance of paper.
Then lightly salt with 'surprise' house guests, particularly book critics. Preferably ones with a habit of writing excoriating reviews. Then get them all to vote each other out not on the basis of how well they get on, but on what they think of what each of them has written that day (limited amounts of paper, say ten sheets each, means they can't spend all day hiding behind the typewriter. Hopefully, anyway). Sort of like a writer's workshop crossed with Rollerball. You could call it Last Author Standing.
Now there's an image that's going to stay with me for a while.
I swear, there'd be blood on the walls. I'd be glued all day. Plus, you'd get something resembling intelligent conversation between people who have enough intelligence to know that Madagascar is a real place, and not just an animated movie.
My fingers would like to inform you this all occurred to me after making a crack about how sharing a cottage with Adrian Tchaikovsky, Paul Cornell, China Mieville, Peter Hamilton and Mark Newton at the SFX Weekender might be compared to a sort of SF/fantasy Celebrity BB house, minus the cameras and bitching. Not that it was really like that, but we spent a lot of time sitting around the kitchen table talking.
Yeah. Same to you, finger.
Anyway. It must be early, because this is a truly stupid idea, and also a really, really, really old one already far past its sell-by date. It's this: bring back Celebrity Big Brother, but give it a different name, put it on BBC4 and fill it with writers. Martin Amis, Jeanette Winterson, Kazuo Ishiguro, and whoever else you can think of. Lock them in there with access to only one manual typewriter and a limited daily allowance of paper.
Then lightly salt with 'surprise' house guests, particularly book critics. Preferably ones with a habit of writing excoriating reviews. Then get them all to vote each other out not on the basis of how well they get on, but on what they think of what each of them has written that day (limited amounts of paper, say ten sheets each, means they can't spend all day hiding behind the typewriter. Hopefully, anyway). Sort of like a writer's workshop crossed with Rollerball. You could call it Last Author Standing.
Now there's an image that's going to stay with me for a while.
I swear, there'd be blood on the walls. I'd be glued all day. Plus, you'd get something resembling intelligent conversation between people who have enough intelligence to know that Madagascar is a real place, and not just an animated movie.
My fingers would like to inform you this all occurred to me after making a crack about how sharing a cottage with Adrian Tchaikovsky, Paul Cornell, China Mieville, Peter Hamilton and Mark Newton at the SFX Weekender might be compared to a sort of SF/fantasy Celebrity BB house, minus the cameras and bitching. Not that it was really like that, but we spent a lot of time sitting around the kitchen table talking.
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