Prizes

George Osborne's having to give Peter Mandelson a Spectator prize a couple of days ago reminded me of when a man I knew, Dai G., was obliged to present a prize to a certain Gwyn C. who I also knew. Osborne and Mandelson had, of course, been good friends until the incident arising from their fraternisation on a Russian oligarch's yacht; after the incident they must have felt themselves to be enemies for life, yet here they were, in a newspaper picture, seeming to enjoy each others' company as Mandelson accepted his prize (for politician of the year or some such thing).
Dai G. and Gwyn C. had been very close friends for some years. Both were playwrights, successful in their own ways, Dai G. on radio, Gwyn C. in publishing plays for the amateur market.
Then something happened between them (I never discovered what) and they became bitter enemies. They never spoke to each other although they were often in the same company, for example at fairly regular meetings of The Welsh Guild of Playwrights.
Every year the Drama Association of Wales ran a play competition for one act plays. One year Dai G. was the adjudicator and Gwyn C. knew that if he entered the competition and Dai got to know it was he, then there was no way he would win. So he entered a play written in a style Dai G. would not recognise as Gwyn's. "Then," he told me, "I borrowed a typewriter so that Dai G. wouldn't recognise the type as mine."
The competition was done using pseudonyms so there was no way Dai G. could know who had entered.
Well, Gwyn won.
Dai G. told me: "I told the secretary of the Drama Association the winner, she wrote the pseudonym down and looked up the winner's name." She told him it was Gwyn C. "Can I change my mind about the winner?" he asked. She shook her head and said "Certainly not."
So there was Dai G. (like George Osborne)having to make a short speech congratulating Gwyn C. on being the year's winner and there was Gwyn C. (like Peter Mandelson) accepting the £50 prize money with very great joy.
They never spoke to each other again.