Man Booker, Maverick Sabre and Wish You Were Here

BY PETER STOTHARD

After two hard-reading days, I might normally find something, however small a something,  on which to post a blog.

But in these Man Booker days, I read only new novels.

And a whole weekend of reading produces thoughts only for future sessions with my fellow judges next month.

The Chairman is in purdah, like Chancellors of the Exchequer once were before their Budgets.

I am saying nothing.

But on each weekend night I did hear a great musician, each one a gentle star from widely different generations.

Top of the bill, I guess, should be David Gilmour-  who on Sunday at the Hammersmith Apollo  concluded a Virtual 60th birthday party for a friend who had died young with a solemn acoustic statement of the thirty-seven year old Pink Floyd classic, Wish You Were Here. It could have been sentimental; it surely was not. 

But only just below him was the four decades younger Maverick Sabre, who on Saturday night at the Roundhouse did much more than remind me why I blogged so enthusiastically about him here two years ago.

Half way through his set  he stopped a fight in the crowd, calling up on stage two much older men with the words that this was not the kind of thing that happened at Maverick Sabre gigs.

He asked them to to shake hands with each other — and so, somewhat dazed and star-struck too,  they did. There is a full description here from The Independent. 

This seemed highly impressive to me. I’ve been at many a journalists’ awards ceremony at which skill like that would have been useful.

I’ve been at Man Booker Prize dinners too where such diplomatic heft would have been reassuring to have in reserve.

This year?

We’ll see.