Winner: Lord Byron (Team GB)Byron walked into marriage like a prisoner to the scaffold. When his fiancee, Annabella, sent back two acceptances to his written marriage proposal, one to his country address, the other to his town address, Byron remarked: ‘It never rains but it pours.’
As he was making his marriage vows, Byron looked round at a male friend and grimaced.
Two months after their marriage, he took his new bride to stay with his half-sister (and former lover) Augusta. ‘Now I have her, you will find I can do without you,’ he said to his bride. ‘We can amuse ourselves without you, dear.’
Silver Medallists: Mr and Mrs Thomas Carlyle (Team GB)‘It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.’
Samuel Butler, 1884.Bronze Medallists: Mr and Mrs John Fowles (Team GB)‘She hates the country, she hates the house, she hates me, she hates my life as a writer and, of course, she hates herself into the bargain.’
John Fowles on his wife Elizabeth, diary entry December 18, 1965.GLUMPIC GOLD MEDAL FOR POP SINGINGWinner: Morrissey (Team GB)‘I was looking for a job, and then I found a job,
‘And heaven knows I’m miserable now,
‘In my life,
‘Why do I give valuable time,
‘To people who don’t care if I live or die?
‘Two lovers entwined pass me by,
‘And heaven knows I’m miserable now.’
GLUMPIC GOLD MEDAL FOR CHRISTMAS CHEER Edwina Currie: Full of Christmas joy and cheer Winner: Edwina Currie (Team GB)‘Christmas at home. I don’t like Christmas. There’s too much of it, and I don’t believe in it: the paganism, the rebirth in the depths of winter . . . the commercialism always makes me nauseous.
‘Long ago I did a deal with the kids: no presents, but I’ll take them to the sales afterwards . . . Ray managed to reduce me to tears after the meal when I said ’87 had been a good year. He said it had been a terrible year for him, with a broken neck most of the year and likely to be in pain all his life. He hurt his neck (not broken) in March when he went to Spain to play golf with his mates and got knocked about in a car crash; and then he invited one of them and his girlfriend on our holiday in Paris at Easter. I was livid and very upset.’
From Edwina Currie Diaries, December 25, 1987. More from Craig Brown... Who trashed Mrs T's shoes? See below... 05/06/13 Why the king of the corgis bit the dust: Eight things you didn't know about the Queen's coronation 03/06/13 Shakespeare? He's only in it for the money 22/05/13 CRAIG BROWN: The perils of beheading a giant prawn 20/05/13 I'll level with you: the British shelf is the best 15/05/13 You'll just love Geoffrey! He's a real character 13/05/13 What a handy place to rest a teacup, Prezza! 08/05/13 Come dine with you? Actually, I'd rather not 06/05/13 So that's why Sunny Jim was so perky! 01/05/13 VIEW FULL ARCHIVE GLUMPIC GOLD MEDAL FOR COMEDYWinner: Les Dawson (Team GB)‘I’m a very unlucky person. Treets melt in my hand, and Lord Longford once mugged me.’
GLUMPIC GOLD MEDAL FOR TOUR OF A DISTINGUISHED NOVELIST’S GROUNDSWinner: Thomas Hardy (Team GB)When the young E. M. Forster visited gloomy novelist Thomas Hardy for tea in 1924, he found himself subjected to a particularly depressing tour of his garden. ‘T. H. showed me the graves of his pets, all overgrown with ivy, their names on the headstones. Such a dolorous muddle.
‘ “This is Snowbell — she was run over by a train . . . this is Pella, the same thing happened to her . . . this is Kitkin, she was cut clean in two, clean in two.”
‘ “How is it that so many of your cats have been run over, Mr Hardy? Is the railway near?’ ”
‘ “Not at all near, not at all near — I don’t know how it is.” ’
GLUMPIC GOLD MEDAL FOR WASHING UPWinner: John Fowles (Team GB)‘Washing a tiny dead spider down the sink. It wasn’t even worth looking at — long dead, perhaps some linyphid. But as I did it, I thought suddenly, acutely and vividly of the human parallel; of being washed into oblivion down a sink.’
Diary entry, January 27, 1990.GLUMPIC GOLD MEDAL FOR REACTION TO PROMOTIONWinner: Chris Mullin MP (Team GB)‘To bed, feeling miserable at the thought of the avalanche of tedium to come.’
On being offered first ministerial post. Diary entry, July 28, 1999.
‘Awoke at 3am, still worrying that I have traded my self-respect and the respect of others for the lowliest rung on the political ladder . . . I lay awake until six compiling a resignation letter.’
Diary entry, August 1, 1999.