There was a glittering curtain, dry ice, a vast cake wheeled on by Harry Hill and kisses galore at the climax of Michael Nyman's birthday celebrations in a packed Hackney Empire. It was typical of the composer to hold his 60th at the local theatre; dressed in what looked like Armani, he probably arrived there on his beloved 38 bus. Griff Rhys Jones, spiritual engineer of the newly restored playhouse, leapt up and gave Nyman a statuette of the Muse that crowns the exterior. This, said Rhys Jones, was to make up for missing out on an Oscar nod for The Piano. There was much laughter, particularly as Nyman had grumbled about this only the week before on Radio 4.
While the art world gongs make very jolly spectator sport for us in the audience, they really matter to those in the running. Which can make the selection process a rather fraught and very serious business. I'm currently on the judging panel for the Gulbenkian Prize, which annually chooses a Museum of the Year with a £100,000 prize. And just before Nyman's birthday party, I was at the meeting to decide who would make the shortlist of four. We six Gulbenkian judges - plus our debonair chair, Loyd Grossman - battled over whether a certain institution in Scotland or a certain institution in England should prevail.
It's a lazy journalist's cliche that judges always "battle". In this case, there was no animosity, perhaps because the longlist was so outrageously varied and involved visits to museums in a Romany caravan (which made the shortlist) and a disused cable factory (which didn't).
Or perhaps it's because the majority of the judges are not professionally linked to the museum world. I know Oscar winners make a fuss about being "selected by their peers", but in my view the further away the judges are from the subject in question, the better. I have horrible memories of an arts prize years ago where most of my fellow judges were so close to the action that they clearly thought they should have been nominees. Every nomination received a loaded citation, either fulsomely positive or vitriolically negative.
But this is nothing compared to the British Sandwich Awards, on which judging panel I also once sat. Forget wandering around museums or reading a zillion novels. What better criterion is there for choosing to whom a prize should go than being able to munch on the nomination itself? If any future judges for the British Sandwich Awards happen to be reading this piece, my single piece of advice is to turn up hungry. And don't be doing Atkins. There's a lot of bread to be eaten during the arduous process of selecting the Best Classic Sandwich, Best Sandwich Innovation (I remember a microwaveable toasted sandwich doing pretty well here), Best Forecourt Sandwich (the least said the better), and so on, up to the mighty Best Sandwich itself. And forget spitting the stuff out, a la wine tasting. You can hardly spit out a half-chewed sarnie. By the end of the eight-hour session, my teeth were furred with bits of buttered Hovis and pitta bread, and I never wanted to look at a sandwich ever again.
Happily, not so with the Gulbenkian. The quartet has been decided and we are all rooting for the chosen museums in Edinburgh, Runcorn, Newcastle and Pembrokeshire.
