Favouritism

There's been quite a flap about the fact that Sir Keir Starmer, according to an interview in The Guardian, admitted that he didn't have a favourite novel or poem. This provoked various opinion pieces indicting him as a soulless robot. (This happened a little while ago, but I've only heard about it today.)

I think it's a stretch to call someone soulless because they don't have a favourite poem or novel-- to say the least. But it has got me thinking about favourites, and the whole business of having favourites.

Personally, I've always had favourites. I like having favourites. I like thinking about favourites, and deciding on favourites, and awarding favourites.

I've realized that other people are different. In fact, lots of people make a face if you ask them for their favourite film, book, etc. "I don't really have a favourite", they reply, in the same tone that people say: "I don't have a television."

I find this irritating. Back when I was on Facebook, I asked people to their name their favourite film (or something), but added: "If you're one of those tiresome, precious people who don't have favourites, just tell me a few that you especially like." (Or something like that.)

Anyway, I'm a favourites kind of guy, for good or ill. Here are a few of my favourites.

1) Favourite overall author: G.K. Chesterton.

2) Favourite poet: W.B. Yeats.

3) Favourite poem: "Ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson.

4) Favourite song: "Night Fever" by the Bee Gees.

5) Favourite film: Groundhog Day.

6) Favourite horror film: either The Wicker Man or Dead of Night (1945).

7) Favourite word: Kaleidoscope.

8) Favourite book of the Bible: Ecclesiastes.

9) Favourite Shakespeare play: The Tempest.

10) Favourite TV show: The Office (US)

11) Favourite dinner: Steak, chips, pepper sauce, onions, peas, Coke.

12) Favourite colour combination: Red and white.

13) Favourite sound: the hum of voices in the air. (Runners up: the sound of cheering and commotion coming from far way, the sound of billiard balls hitting each other, the sounds of a busy train station in the morning.)

14: Favourite female beauty: Kate Beckinsale circa her Van Helsing period.

15: Favourite environment: the cinema.

16: Favourite animal: Crow.

17: Favourite place: Chiocca's, an eatery (more precisely, a ratskeller) in Richmond, Virginia.

18: Favourite phrase: Softly-falling snow.

19: Favourite historical period: the 1970s.

(I do have this in common with Sir Keir: I can't name a favourite book. Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis is one candidate. Dead as Doornails, a memoir of literary Dublin in the forties and fifties by Anthony Cronin, is another.)