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Weirdly, I discovered when going through the 47 trillion words I’ve written since 2016 that I often don’t even have a memory of writing half of them. It slightly felt like I had written a book I hadn’t read. A bit like Katie Price – only instead of not having even skimmed a single one of my seven autobiographies, I was completely in the dark about other stuff. Take the whole week of daily columns in March 2019, focusing on something called “indicative votes”. What in the name of sanity were they? I’ve heard of past-lives therapy; maybe I need past-columns therapy. Just as distinguished Hollywood crazy Shirley MacLaine is convinced she previously walked the earth as Charlemagne’s Moorish peasant lover, so I could be assured that I really did once, only last year, turn out 1,100 words on how Boris Johnson had literally swapped bodies with his dog. I mean, it sounds like something I might have done? And I don’t think I have an alibi for it?
Since 2000, Hyde has worked for The Guardian, at first writing the newspaper's Diary column. She contributes three columns a week: one on sport, one on celebrity, and one which is typically about politics. Her sport column appears on Thursday; her celebrity column is entitled Lost in Showbiz and appears in the G2 supplement each Friday. She has a regular serious column in the main section of The Guardian on Saturday, as well as a column in the "Weekend" supplement, in which she parodies a celebrity diary entry. This is entitled A Peek at the Diary of..., which ends in the sign-off, "As seen by Marina Hyde". Hyde was nominated as Columnist of the Year in the 2010 British Press Awards. An infinite number of gag-writers, working all day in a gag factory, couldn’t come up with any of the perfectly-formed one-liners that populate Marina Hyde’s hilarious writing . . . But behind the wit lurks real anger, argument, exasperation and intelligence. Her writing is more than a gentle poke in the ribs: it’s a well-wrought and deftly aimed smash in the teeth.’ Much as it will be a useful piece of social and political history, it’s the bantz that you come to Ms H for and she remains reliably on point, whether coining the word wallygarchy to describe Johnson’s gift of a knighthood to the spectacularly useless and unpleasant Gavin Williamson, or the description of Andrea Leadsom’s terrifying smile - “it’ll come after you, that smile”. Marina somehow frequently nails what it is we find so unlikeable/despicable/sinister about certain public figures. a b " The Guardian 's Marina Hyde wins two SJA awards in landmark achievement". The Guardian. 24 February 2020 . Retrieved 25 February 2020. Hyde, Marina (5 July 2008). "A peek at the diary of ... Elton John". The Guardian . Retrieved 14 October 2017.
I am a huge fan of Marina Hyde's column in the Guardian. Her particular form of acerbic wit, the way she has of using such a wide frame of cultural references to illustrate her points, really appeal to me - as, I will admit up front, does her left-wing inclinations. She decided not to edit the articles in this collection, which spans the years from Brexit to the appointment of the first of a series of short-lived Tory PMs, taking in Trumpian politics, and dipping into Hollywood, moguls and the media by way of light relief. Ultimately, it's hard to see Branson as anything other than the classic 'billionaire philanthropist' (is there any other kind of billionaire?) who declines to accept that the public finances would be in rather better state if people like them contributed their fair share. Forgive me for repeating myself, but philanthropy starts with paying tax. With the best will inn the world, it isn't enough to imply the only reason you operate out of a tax haven is because you like the weather." Morgan, Piers (30 June 2012). The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4464-9168-3. Yet does this level of savage farce spare anyone the need to take GB News seriously? I fear not. On the one hand, not a lot of people currently watch it. On the other, its importance seemingly cannot be overstated by some rather interesting figures. The Conservative party conference featured so many GB News shout-outs that you could almost imagine they were concerted. “I do also want to welcome some more friends here tonight,” announced Priti Patel at one point. “Our friends that are here, the newest, most successful, most dynamic, no-nonsense news station, and the defenders of free speech, that is my friends at GB News. Thank you for everything that you do. Just incredible. Honestly, just incredible.” Then there was Liz Truss. “Thank you for all you do,” she declared on stage to a GB News presenter. “And thank you for your work on GB News. Because in my view, we need more economics journalism, and we need more GB News. Challenging the orthodoxy, broadcasting common sense and transforming our media landscape. So long may it continue.”
Surprisingly few ever complain though. But then, “it’s a terrible show of weakness to have read [the column],” she says with a laugh. “Johnson always when I’ve seen him has gone—” she looks down and gruffly shakes her head. “I think that’s absolutely ridiculous. What he should really do is pretend that he’s never seen it at all.”June 2016: Nigel Farage is about to achieve everything he wants. That alone should make leavers think again. She rarely writes about herself. But the week the story of Sarah Everard’s awful death broke, she was followed and verbally abused by a strange man as she was collecting one of her children. She decided to write about it because it was so commonplace. “The vogue 10 or 15 years ago was everybody writing first-person pieces about terrible things that have happened to them. I do so sparingly… I suppose it’s exposing, isn’t it? I’m really quite private, so I don’t like to do that. But I thought that there was a reason for it.”
It occurs to me that Marina Hyde may not be a real person at all, but a kind of famished waif, with clinical vampirism who is kept in big dark glass cage somewhere in the recesses of the Guardian newspaper and just let loose at feeding time. As settings go, it feels a little on-the-nose for a meeting with, arguably, the country’s foremost living satirist, one who—through Brexit, four Tory prime ministers, Trump, and a global pandemic, via narcissistic celebrities, evil billionaires, disgraced princes, and, of course, spineless politicians—has become the chief chronicler of our stranger-than-fiction times. Finally: the content. It showed what acres of top class, well informed and witty writing MH produces, week by month by year. Nothing in it, IMHO, was anything near sub par, and I can think of few other writers who seem to unable to write a bad paragraph. As well as being informative, it all contains at least wry amusement and, more often than not, just reduces me to helpless laughter. I’m glad I did in the end as it made me angry! With the amateurish, self centred politics, populist, government that we’ve experienced in the UK over the past few years. Major topics covered included the Brexit nonsense, CoVid responses and the buffoonish Boris Johnson. Even a dash of Trump, to show it’s not just us suffering from an introverted popularism in our politics. Hyde is the daughter of Sir Alastair Edgcumbe James Dudley-Williams, 2nd Baronet, and his wife, the former Diana Elizabeth Jane Duncan. Through her father, she is the granddaughter of aviation pioneer and Conservative politician Sir Rolf Dudley-Williams, 1st Baronet. She attended Downe House School, near Newbury in Berkshire, [1] and read English at Christ Church, Oxford. [2] The Sun [ edit ]
Celebrity kittens, and big beasts are I imagine, fed to her through a hatch, on a pitch fork, from a distance for the safety of her handlers. These pieces are as you would expect from someone, working themselves into a frenzy over little celebrities, are FROTHY and full of SHOUTY capital letters, sometimes whole sentences, and yups. You’d have someone ring up and say, ‘I’m in bed with Robbie Williams, do you want to write the story?’” she recalls, breathless with excitement at the memory. “I mean, it was absolutely hilarious. It was constant mayhem.” Up until then, the world of newspapers hadn’t been a consideration, but in 2000 she landed her first proper gig at The Guardian, writing its Diary column, before starting the cult, long-running celebrity column Lost in Showbiz. Some of it is funny, some of it is painfully skewering, some of it is insightful, etc. If you're a fan of essay collections this might be a fun read. If you're someone who reads Hyde regularly or are looking for new material from here, this probably isn't the book for you and would be skippable. Hyde has won awards for her journalism. In 2017 she was named Political Commentator of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, as well as winning the Commentariat of the Year Award. [18] At the 2018 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, she received the Commentator of the Year award. In 2019, she won Political Commentator of the Year at the National Press Awards. [19] Also in 2019, she received the Columnist of the Year award at the British Journalism Awards. [20] She won the same award again at the British Journalism Awards in 2020. [21] Also in 2020, she became the first woman ever to win the Sports Journalist of the Year award at the British Sports Journalism Awards. At the same event, she also won Sports Columnist of the Year. [17] In 2020 Hyde won the London Press Club's Edgar Wallace Award for writing or reporting of the highest quality. [22] Other work [ edit ]
Greenslade, Roy (24 December 2011). "Caseby's squalid note to the Guardian editor shows News International's true face". The Guardian.Hyde, Marina (13 December 2008). "A victory for irony as Elton John loses Guardian libel case". The Guardian. London. It was a real sandbox,” she says. “I could do what I wanted with it—I definitely wouldn’t be writing about politics in the way I do if I hadn’t done that.” It is her ability to draw from popular culture and sport, alongside history and politics, that make Hyde’s columns so appealing. “Most people don’t know all these obscure political references, but everyone likes [Taylor Swift’s] ‘Blank Space,’” she reasons. “I get very annoyed by people who will pretend not to know who Kim Kardashian is,” she groans. “Nobody ever says, ‘Who’s Cristiano Ronaldo?’” She has penned some incredibly funny descriptions of Boris Johnson over the past six years. How does she write those? “I’m letting you into my process, which I feel is the least interesting process ever. I go on Google Images, and I just look at the pictures and I kind of let my eyes drift a bit. And then you just think, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s a Cabbage Patch Draco Malfoy.’ Or, ‘Oh, he looks like an Oxfam donation bag torn open by a fox.’” Ponsford, Dominic (1 July 2013). " Sun 's outspoken managing editor Richard Caseby understood to be standing down". Press Gazette. Elton John unsuccessfully sued The Guardian for libel in relation to Hyde's spoof diary column "A peek at the diary of... 'Sir Elton John'", published in July 2008. [6] Mr Justice Tugendhat ruled that the "irony" and "teasing" did not amount to defamation. [7] Hyde published a follow-up diary of Elton John in 2009. [8]
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