Is Mark Lawson the worst writer in the world?

Fans of The Late Review might like to try the The Late Review Drinking Game

Mind you, I admit Lawson isn't even the most awful on his page, never mind in the world. John O'Farrell lurks below.

Liddle, Hogan, etc, are scum sure enough. But I don't think any of them are capable of sentences like the one I quoted above. They may have less to say, but I think ML is the worst writer of prose.

From to-days (rubbish) observer Magazine BTW, we have someone called Will Buckley, who writes this:

"There is an immediate bond between non-drivers. Discovering that someone in their mid-thirties has yet to pass their test, instantly reveals a great deal about their past and character. One, they will have lived in London all their adult life......" I didn't bother reading anything past the first paragraph. Will Buckley quite possibly is a nice person, but he is getting paid for writing shit. Shit.

To-day, on the radio, there ws some talk ov some children's book, about London being nuclear powered, and eating up all the other towns & cities. Apparently it is quite the hit and is being read by adults a lot. The presenter wondered if this was b/c it was really good, or was it a sign ov decreasing literacy among general publick readers. The other option which immediately came to my mind was not mentioned. That it is perhaps a sign that a lot of mainstream fiction is piss. Or perhaps it meant nothing, I dunno.

...oh, and the beard, obv.

*steve runs away

But yes, Will Buckley is useless. The proliferation of so many utterly USELESS photo-bylined columnists in the Guardian (and every other broadsheet) finally helped me to kick the newspaper habit.

P.S. Does anybody know where to get a a copy of his book Tits-Out Teenage Terror Totty? I have asked various establishments (including most internet ones such as Amazon) and they say it's out of print! Please help me find a copy!!!!

Written by women for women, 'chick lit' first prised open a literary space for a good whinge (and the odd joke) about what gals wanted and just weren’t getting. More often than not, the heroine occupied a successful and well-paid job with an abundance of friends to help throw away her ‘Chardonnay pound’, causing mischief in the photocopying room and generally having a whale of a time.

Woah. Way to completely triviliase the female sex.

But still, and apart from all she had achieved, the idea of becoming a ‘successful woman’ was inherent on one thing. The number one spot on her post-it list of life’s ambitions was the need to search out the most elusive of God’s creatures, that ticket to everlasting happiness and security – The Perfect Man.

Is 'inherent' your typo, Andrew, or is the writer semi-literate?

Jerry, fair goes: the point is that I *respect* Lawson, where a lot of people don't. I'm a *fan* of Michael Wood.

Tom E to thread, surely.

yes, I've finally lost patience witht he papers a few months ago.

b-but that's Tom's voice too!

I know it's not something you can pick up on your ariel, but I don't know anyone with a telly who doesn't have Sky.

Well there are lots of people. Me (now) for example.

I guess he is conflating two things in order to make this argument: channels generally designed to cater for minority interests (ie. BBC2 and C4) and channels aimed at the mass market that, comparatively, not many people watch (Sky One).

How comparatively? I'm not trying to rubbish your argument here, I'm just curious as to whether anyone has figures for this.

PS: I am trying to rubbish your argument.

In the nineties it became a lot more of a charter thing, and imports were hence shoved on to BBC2 which could carry high quality non-local-sourced programming.

OK, here are the latest BARB figures. So yeah Sky One has an average 2% audience share, against 25% or so for BBC1 and ITV1.

Estimated Audience Share Figures for Selected Television Channels Received in the British Islands in the 9 Months Ended 30 September 2002

Channel Percentage audience share

BBC1 26.3
BBC2 11.3
ITV1 24.3
Channel Four 10.0
Channel 5 6.4

Animal Planet 0.1
At the Races 0.1
BBC Choice 0.3
BBC News 24 0.3
Biography Channel 0.1
Boomerang 0.3
The Box 0.2
Bravo 0.3
Cartoon Network 0.4
Cartoon Network Plus 0.1
CBeebies 0.5
Challenge TV 0.2
Channel Health 0.1
Discovery 0.4
Discovery Health 0.1
Disney Channel 0.3
Disney Playhouse 0.1
Disney Toon 0.1
E4 0.9
Eurosport 0.2
Fox Kids Network 0.2
Granada Men & Motors 0.1
Granada Plus 0.3
Hallmark 0.4
The History Channel 0.2
Home & Leisure 0.3
HTV 1.8
ITN News 0.1
ITV2 0.5
Kerrang 0.1
Kiss TV 0.1
Living 0.6
Magic TV 0.1
MTV 0.2
MTV Base 0.1
MTV Hits 0.1
MTV2 0.1
National Geographic 0.1
Network 2 0.1
Nickelodeon 0.6
Nick Jr 0.2
The Paramount Channel 0.3
Q Channel (Box TV) 0.1
QVC 0.1
RTE1 0.1
S4C Wales 0.3
The Sci-Fi Channel 0.3
Sky Box Office 0.1
Sky Cinema 0.1
Sky Cinema 2 0.1
Sky Moviemax 0.3
Sky Moviemax 2 0.1
Sky Moviemax 3 0.1
Sky Moviemax 4 0.1
Sky Moviemax 5 0.1
Sky News 0.4
Sky One 2.0
Sky Premier 0.4
Sky Premier 2 0.2
Sky Premier 3 0.2
Sky Premier 4 0.2
Sky Premier Widescreen 0.1
Sky Sports 1 0.8
Sky Sports 2 0.4
Sky Sports 3 0.1
Sky Sports Extra 0.1
Sky Sports News 0.2
Smash Hits 0.1
TCM 0.2
Trouble 0.2
UK Drama 0.1
UK Food 0.1
UK Gold 0.9
UK Gold 2 0.1
UK Horizons 0.2
UK Play 0.1
UK Style 0.6
VH-1 0.1
VH-1 Classic 0.1
Zee TV 0.1

Wait, I know the last one's true.

I have no real evidence of this either. I was just trying to weasel out of an overgeneralisation. Ask me anything about telly watching patterns in my flat. Go on, anything!

Yes, it is my impression that more people have non-terrestrial (thanks Alan, though surely digital-through-aerial TV channels spoil this name, really) in Ireland than the UK. As you say, mainly cause RTE et al. don't really cut it for the kids.

PF - do you accept my point about 'minority channels' above (ie. that if Sky One is a minority channel, it is a very different sort of minority channel to BBC2 - perhaps you don't accept that BBC2 is a minority channel)

was it any bloody wonder no one watched the creaky f*cking thing ?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2250534,00.html

this is so depressingly inaccurate. i swear so many critics just say shit like this to make themselves feel better about their job and what they have to cover.

The star system of criticism - in which films or books are awarded a string of spangly asterisks out of five - remains controversial for journalists and.....

That's as far as I got. I'd be surprised if anyone got much further.

I got as far as the "revolution of ambition" bit.

Y'know when people on here talk about the kind of attitudes Lawson gets paid to express, people say they're inventing straw-men.

ok i didnt get further than the first paragraph and went straight to the comments section. the premise of the whole article annoyed me too much.

Journalists writing about other journalists, or writing about themselves in the pages of broadsheet newspapers makes my piss boil. For fuck's sakes you're supposed to be a GOOD WRITER, and someone whose thoughts on cultural matters are interesting and worthwhile and the best thing you can come up with is a treatise on star ratings in reviews? NOBODY CARES.

Oh, sorry, he's saying that there's some better films around at the moment? Maybe he could have phrased his introductory paragraph a bit better, eh.

it's not particularly offensive, just blah

Five and a bit years later, I still think Mark Lawson is the worst writer in the world, if not The Guardian.

Ivan Reitman's Juno?

you're supposed to be a GOOD WRITER, and someone whose thoughts on cultural matters are interesting and worthwhile and the best thing you can come up with is a treatise on star ratings in reviews? NOBODY CARES.

Huh. "A treatise on star ratings in reviews" is Andrew Collins' column in the current Word mag.
What is that sitcom starring Stephen Fry written by Lawson? Bloody awful.

Absolute Power. Although I think he only wrote one episode. But yeah, awful.

I liked it.

What's noteworthy about the current golden age of cinema - which, when the histories are written, will surely rank with the 40s and the 70s as one of the three key periods - is that everyone is around to see it.

worth discussing tho i'm sure it frequently is by film buffs

Even 10 years ago, it would have been unimaginable that a film-maker of the high journalistic and political intelligence of Paul Greengrass would have been asked to take over a shooty-bangs franchise or that he would have accepted. But Greengrass, and his audiences and critics, can now move quite happily between United 93 and The Bourne Ultimatum.

anyone disagree strongly with this? probably exaggearing, and not sure how i feel about the term 'shooty-bangs' yet

don't see what's so bad about this article at all in terms of how it's written or the point it's making, however short-sighted or outside-looking-in it might seem.

the point about greengrass is about okay; but he's really stating a preference for 00s new seriousness over 90s in-jokeyness there. there weren't many shooty-bang films like the 'bournes' back then; but if really pressed i guess soderbergh's 'schizopolis'/'out of sight'/'the limey' back-and-forth is a comparison you could make.

what's funny is that there are a number of books about the late 90s as a hollywood ('indiewood') golden age. and given that three of the filmmakers he names as part of the current golden age were active then (coens, pta, burton), i don't get his point about now being particularly. and all three were better in the 90s! there's a well-marketed fake-indie like 'juno' everywhere. big friggin' deal.

What's noteworthy about the current golden age of cinema - which, when the histories are written, will surely rank with the 40s and the 70s as one of the three key periods - is that everyone is around to see it.

pretty mystifying. who is 'everyone'? film critics? like they matter. before tv, films basically disappeared very quickly so only a very small number of people talked about golden ages at all -- and 'obviously' they hated hollywood films. but i would imagine that the millions of regular people who went to see "films noir" (they weren't called that at the time) in the 40s thought they were pretty awes.

the 70s meanwhile -- i think there was a fair bit of self-consciousness about it being a golden age, although in both the 40s and the 70s the films were pretty pessimistic, and it takes a certain frame of mind to call an age as fucked as the early 70s 'golden'.

also even if you think the late 00s rank with the 40s and 70s as a golden age -- i don't -- and allow that the notion of the golden age is illusory, surely for cinema as a whole the golden ages are the 20s and the 60s? it seems pretty obviously so to me, anyway.

The main reason for this renaissance is that all levels of cinema - from the people who put up the budget to the people who pay for tickets - have become less frightened of intelligence and complexity. In its first decades, the people who made movies tended to come - except for an injection of European intellectuals displaced by Hitler - out of mainstream art forms such as vaudeville and Broadway. Now, a producer, director or actor is likely to have been schooled - and then film-schooled - to high levels, and can rely on a potential audience of similar sophistication.

amazed i passed over this bit of nonsense -- this was a commonplace in the early decades of the 20th century. often mixed with naked anti-semitism. it's really really hatefully stupid and wrong. one point of interest is that the big 'death of hollywood' pieces written since the late 70s (eg kael's 'why are movies so bad?') say that having college and business school types run the business had been terrible, because the old-school showmen actually had some moviemaking horse-sense. i'm an agnostic on that point, but why having WASPs running tings makes the movies better is one to ponder.

what he means by 'intelligence and complexity' is hard to figure out -- did chaplin need this kind of education? did hitchcock? he's tripping balls if he thinks a literary education makes for better filmmakers. also the point about better educated filmgoers ---> better films beggars the question where lawson is coming from. when there were millions of people going to the cinema every night, were they all deluded? he just means they meet a middle-class standard of respectability.

also 'there will be blood' really isn't that good!

Absolute Power. Although I think he only wrote one episode. But yeah, awful.

-- Ned Trifle II, Saturday, 2 February 2008 08:59 (7 hours ago) Link

I liked it.

-- blueski, Saturday, 2 February 2008 13:03 (3 hours ago) Link

What did you like about it? I found it depressing which is really not what I look for in comedy.

Yeah, this is pretty sickening, the film buff version of: "Isn't it great all these indie rock bands are having hits with their proper music?"

xpost

What did you like about it? I found it depressing which is really not what I look for in comedy.

well The Thick Of It is arguably more depressing altho admittedly a lot better/funnier than Absolute Power at the same time. it just came down to the performances - all of the characters managed a striking balance of remaining likeable or at least charismatic despite their unscrupulous antics (like Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker in TTOI), and the issues it bandied around re exploiting those who or that which deserves to be exploited, all in this fairly jolly and playful english context just felt fun over anything else. as was the extras effect of minor sleb cameos. also alison is hot.

90s golden age = only in technology terms i would've thought, the 00s being just the refinement of this? reminds me of thread i wanted to start re when was the point adult audiences stopped being wowed by FX and became far more critical of their nature and usage - Phantom Menace seems like the obvious culprit.

i think Lawson was partly getting at the idea that the Coens, Burton etc. becoming so high profile now for their relative auteur status was important and good...akin to celebrating Radiohead as 'best band in the world' (not really provable but easy to present them as such depending where you look e.g. last.fm). pointless maybe but not too bothered because i like all these artists.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/sep/13/the-great-british-bake-off-disaster-why-the-bbc-got-burned

The word “turnover”, which has until now applied to The Great British Bake Off only as a technical challenge, has become an instruction to its fans.

Lawson is one of those people whose writing I cannot read without hearing his voice in my head narrating it. Others are Clive James and Alan Bennett.