This is Nancy Banks-Smith. She’s celebrating forty years at the news desk writing very funny features for the national press, and she’s still writing the TV column at the Guardian, who have this to say about her;
‘A shrewd, unprejudiced writer, Nancy created the art of TV reviewing as tangential knockabout comedy – a mode that set the agenda, and has been followed ever since but never equalled. She doesn’t do the day-in-day-out stint any more, but Nancy remains by a distance the funniest columnist writing, better than the stuff she writes about.’
I wish there was a ‘Collected Columns’ book of her best work – she certainly deserves it more than most writers. She has made me laugh out loud a great many times while reading the paper, and reminds me of a journalist called Marjorie Bilbow, who was required to review every film that opened in Britain for Screen International, something she managed to do with a wry smile whether it was a grim Romanian drama or a sleazy sex romp.
I believe that writers like these form the backbone of the country’s unique literacy. It’s not just about the award-winners, the self-consciously literary novelists, but men and women who are largely unsung career writers, who connect with everyday readers and transform even the most mundane subjects into sources of illumination and happiness. Read some of Nancy’s stuff here.
Happy 40, Nancy.