Morrissey criticism wins Hatchet Job prize

A scathing overview of vocalist Morrissey's current autobiography has won an award offered annually to "the author of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant guide review" of the previous 12 months.

AA Gill's Sunday Times review was named Hatchet-Job of the Yr for declaring the memoir was "totally devoid of penetration, heat, knowledge or likeability".

The publication, he explained, shown "conceit, self pity and logorrhoeic dullness".

Eight evaluations in all were short listed because of this year's prize.

Morrissey's autobiography was released, at his insistence, underneath the Penguin Classics imprint - typically allowed for the kind of Moliere and Machiavelli.

Gill robustly challenged the move-in his 1,200-term critical review, contacting it a "pooterishly uncomfortable bit of intellectual societal scaling".

Hijacking the Penguin Classics manufacturer "doesn't belittle Aristotle or Homer or Tolstoy," he added, "it simply roundly mocks Morrissey, which is a mortification built by the self esteem of its own sufferer".

He continued: And these are only his great qualities."

The 2014 prize-offering in the Mentor and Horses pub in London's Soho observed Gill given both his Golden Hatchet prize as well as a yr's offer of potted shrimp.

This season's winner was determined with a judging panel that included former Independent editor Rosie Boycott, the Common's artwork critic Brian Sewell along with the writer and educational John Sutherland.