The occasion of Michael Moorcock’s birthday got me thinking about a little known aspect of the extraordinary polymath ‘s award-winning career: The Jack Trevor Story Memorial Cup Award.
Michael Moorcock presenting the The Jack Trevor Story Memorial Award Cup to Howard Waldrop (photo: Elze Hamilton)
Maintained and awarded by Moorcock, The Jack Trevor was originally presented to the writer of the story in the Time Out series of London stories that he best liked. In more recent times, a special committee, organized by Moorcock, determines the winner, typically for excellence in humorous writing. The five hundred guinea prize is given with the following conditions: The entire award must be spent “in a week to a fortnight” and the recipient must have nothing to show for it. Most winners use the money for a big night or a foreign vacation. One winner, a trawlerman from Hull who spent the money with the expertise of a drunken sailor before he got home, had to spend the money all over again just to prove to his shipmates that he’d won it.
The Cup awarded to Steve Aylett (photo: John Coulthart)
The unique terms of the award are based on Jack Trevor Story‘s famous words when asked at his second bankruptcy what happened to money from his films The Trouble with Harry and Live Now, Pay Later. The judge wondered how he managed to go through so much without having a thing to show for it.
You know how it is, your honour ‑‑ two hundred or two thousand ‑‑ it always lasts a week to a fortnight. You can spend a couple of hundred easy just going around the supermarket.
Past winners have included Fred Normandale, Steve Aylett, Nicholas Lezard, and Howard Waldrop (the only American so honored). The memorial cup is just that. A cup with the words Jack Trevor Story Memorial Cup written on the side in magic marker.
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I typed in “The Jack Trevor Story Memorial Cup” to find out if it was still being awarded and I was so pleased that it is. I bought “The Urban District Lover” in 1966 followed by “Something For Nothing” and then “Live Now Pay Later”, reverse order!
My previous favourite book had been “Mist Over Athelney” by Geoffrey Trease and I purchased it in 1961 (when Boots who used to run a library service in our local town of Grantham but had decided to close it). I was 11 years old then and until that time had read just Enid Blyton books ! The librarian’s assistant told me that she thought I would enjoy the book, even though I was only eleven I can remember her clearly, she was blond, very pretty and very friendly. I still have that book today (ie. sixty years later) and quite recently re-read it and still very much enjoyed it. However, the Albert Argyle trilogy remain my life long favourites. To give myself a real treat and usually about once every eight or nine years I take them out and re-read them, wondering each time if I will still enjoy them as much as the last time. Those three books are a treasure to me, so much so that I sometimes find myself re-reading a phrase or a page just to glean the sheer enjoyment again, there and then. Needless to say I have a large collection of JTS’s books and magazine articles. When he died those thirty years ago it saddened me very much, I miss him to this day. I used to think that I would like to go on Mastermind with “The Works Of Jack Trevor Story” as my subject, I think that I could have gone a long way with that! Alas, the old brain box is tending to give up on me now but at least, comfortingly, my Jack Trevor Story novels line the book shelves in an alcove next to my bed. I’m sure that the man himself would have been cynical and dismissive of such codswallop as I write here, but one advantage with older age is that I couldn’t care less.
Anyway Mr Michael Moorcock, thank you very much for continuing to make the award and for keeping the memory of Jack Trevor Story so fresh and smilingly alive.