Simon says.....I won't say!

On tonight's programme I tried to persuade Simon Armitage the chair of the judging panel for the TS Eliot Prize 2009 to reveal the winner ahead of the 7pm announcement.

Armitage is a very funny man, the kind who wears his writing skills lightly. From being a supermarket shelf stacker to a probation officer he has lived. And all, apart from a brief stint in Portsmouth England and Massachusets US of A, he has lived mainly in his native Huddersfield.

This is the man who, with no interest in classical music, wrote a new narration to the Oscar winning animated film "Peter and the Wolf" which played at the Royal Festival Hall last month while three years ago his dreams of being a rock star were finally realised when he and a friend set up the band The Scaremongers. His dad had suggested the name Mid Life Crisis.

So I reckoned if anyone was going to chuck the 7pm embargo out the window along with the rock n roll television etc it would be him.

No.

We started talking at around quarter to 7, he was at the ceremony, worried that he had only another 15 minutes of having 10 friends, ie the 10 poets shortlisted for the great poetry prize. So we talked about the prize, the money (15K), the recession (15K would come in handy), the reality of selling poetry books these days, I mentioned Michael Longley and his annoyance that the major book stores never promote poetry books at the front of the store and he has to rummage through the shelves to find his own. Anyhow, bottom line is I knew Simon knew. He knew the winner's name. He had chosen him. Or her. And I hoped that he would tell.

We were chatting away but secretly I was watching the clock thinking if I just kept him talking to as close to 7 as possible, the time the winner would be announced, he had to let the name slip. I mean what's a few minutes? And come on, we had two Irish poets in the running, Sinead Morrissey and Eileen Ni Chuilleanain. 

And another Irish poet, Derry woman Colette Bryce was on the judging panel. I felt with that trinity of poetesses all Simon had to do was cough and in the cough say the name. Come on. Easy. What's a few minutes on an embargo???

But he didn't. So I find out after we go off air that the winner is Philip Gross for his poetry book The Water Table. Water eh, watertight more like where Simon Armitage is concerned.

If you ever need someone to keep a secret then Simon, this grounded, modest, Huddersfield born and bred writer and lead singer is your man.