Should Lily Allen have dropped off the Orange book prize panel?

It's very disappointing that Lily Allen has dropped out of judging the Orange Prize for Fiction. Despite persistent rumours that the organisers had intended to get Lily Cole, the model with a place at Cambridge, to add a bit of sparkle to proceedings, rather than Allen, she made good progress with the books being considered and took an active part, I'm told by other judges, in the first round. Albeit by phone.

The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction is awarded to the writer who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best, eligible full-length novel in English, according to the prize's website. And Lily has pulled out because of ill health, according to her manager.

She's had a tough year, and it's probably better that she extracted herself now than that the prize was plagued by a never-ending series of leaks about her not showing up and not contributing and then finally her dropping out later.

But it does give so much ammunition to those people who repeat over and again that celebs ought not to be brought in to choose what makes a good book any more than they ought to be solving problems of world poverty or war.

Oh, wait ...

Fear not, however, if you like those sorts of grumbles. There will be plenty of opportunity for them tomorrow. This evening, as it happens, sees the Galaxy book awards. These are the most celebtastic of the lot, integrally wrapped up with the Richard and Judy book group and describing themselves as 'the Oscars of the book trade'.

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