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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. 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. I’ve always felt the best way to do things is to kind of keep that angry voice out in general,” she says. “The less ostensibly serious my columns became, the more they were able to make serious points.” Now, as we enter autumn and a new administration, she is desperate “for some new characters”, she says. “Who’s in our fall collection?” she smiles, a glint in her eye. “Who have we got? I’m dying to know.”
June 2016: As for Boris, never forget that the only untruth the prime ministerial favourite-in-waiting corrected in the entire campaign was the Sunday Times misapprehension that he dyed his hair. Marina Hyde writes for The Guardian newspaper and “What Just Happened” is a collection of her columns from 2016 - 2022, mostly a satirical commentary on British politics but also with sections on other topics including the royal family, sport and celebrities. Each year in politics as its own section (2016: Binfire of the Vanities, 2021: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before) with the other topics interspersed. I thought this was a good way to lay out the book as it broke up the narrative and also provided a bit of light relief. Although that’s not to say that this book was unrelenting doom and gloom - Marina Hyde’s writing is extremely witty and had me laughing out loud a lot of the time. 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.Though Geldof was annoying she was turning a corner and was on her way to becoming an interesting woman, but we will never know now what she might have become, will we? A full state banquet of crazy: Marina Hyde’s Guardian column has been a reliable place to turn to for comic relief when the grotesque incompetence, chaos, sleaze and lies of our betters threaten to overwhelm. Arguably, a collection of journalistic hot takes on an unusually turbulent period in our history - this volume starts in 2019 and ends in the defenestration of Johnson - runs the risk of seeming horribly dated but we need this as a reminder, and a laugh out loud one at that, of all that has happened. a b " The Guardian 's Marina Hyde wins two SJA awards in landmark achievement". The Guardian. 24 February 2020 . Retrieved 25 February 2020. February 2021: Rishi Sunak... Exchequer spokesmodel/gyoza-toting architect of Eat Out To Spread It About/the Conservative party's idea of a cool person. Marina Hyde wins London Press Club award". The Guardian. 15 October 2020 . Retrieved 24 February 2021.
I greatly enjoyed reading the book, partly because I agree with the author’s sentiments, partly for the style of writing and also because it was a sobering reminder of how the country has ended up in its present state.
Columns from the inimitable Marina Hyde from 2016-2022: if you haven't read her, feast your eyes on quotations below and rest assured, there's plenty more of this sardonic commentary. In the interests of our sanity.
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