Booker prize 2011: Stella Rimington's broadside against critics was entertaining, for all the wrong reasons

Like most people watching the Man Booker ceremony last night, I'd had a bit to drink. Not too much, but enough to make the experience more fun. Let's face it: literary events, especially if you're watching them on TV, generally need a bit of pepping up – or so I thought beforehand. In the event, I wish I'd kept a clear head. Then I might have had a better grasp of what the hell was going on.

At first, things went pretty much as expected. Filling in until the announcement, Gavin Esler strove manfully to avoid appearing flighty beside the saturnine Andrew Motion. Motion made lofty pronouncements about Literature – and incidentally provided one of the best one-line reviews I've heard, about poor AD Miller's Snowdrops: "This book wasn't well written enough to keep my eyebrows level." After that high point, the conversation became ever more desperate, as everyone wondered how much dead airtime they were going to have to fill. And when the main event suddenly began, they were inevitably in mid-flow and didn't know whether to carry on or stow it. They carried on, into an uncomfortable fade-out. And then?

It took me quite a while to figure out what was happening. Was Stella Rimington joking when she compared the publishing world with the KGB at its height, thanks to its use of "black propaganda, destabilisation operations, plots and double agents"? Ah no, she wasn't joking. At least I don't think so – and not if Howard Jacobson's face was anything to go by when the camera fortunately zeroed in on him. As he ages, his physiognomy is becoming almost as eloquent as his writing. Last night it said: "What the hell?"

There was no need to wonder why Rimington was in such dudgeon. A quick recap for those who have been living under a stone for the past month: this year's panel has been telling the world that they think "readability" and the ability to "zip along" are crucial criteria for judging books. Literary critics, in return, have suggested that there might be more important things to take into account, such as quality. To back up their argument, the critics have cited this year's shortlist – which, most seem to agree, was the worst in decades.

Anyway, back to Jacobson. It was such a wonderful moment that I dissolved into laughter, missing several key points in Rimington's oration. Alarmingly, when I got it together again, she appeared to be quoting from Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism:

Some ne'er advance a Judgment of their own,
But catch the spreading Notion of the Town;
They reason and conclude by Precedent,
And own stale Nonsense which they ne'er invent.
Some judge of Authors' Names, not Works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the Writings, but the Men.

"I could go on," she said. "But I won't. I'm sure you get the point." I'm not sure I did. Clearly this was a dig at the aforementioned critics – but wasn't she supposed to be talking about the shortlist, not them? Wasn't this supposed to be about six other people in the room, not her? Was this in any way dignified?

And do those poor underpaid critics really deserve such opprobrium? Most critics I've met – since they tend towards the end of the spectrum occupied by people who love to put their hands up first when the teacher asks a question – could quite easily have found jobs in banks. But they didn't because they love reading (and have morals). Most of them would have wanted to be on the same side as Rimington. They only get annoyed when judges seem to be favouring marketability over quality because they passionately believe the best should triumph. Didn't she want that too? Was it really fair to say: "for some, sales seem to be a cause for anxiety"? Isn't that a distortion of the argument? Which literary critic wouldn't want to see a wonderful book sell well? And is it really, as she said, "dumbing down" for critics to come up with alternate shortlists? Isn't that just a bit of fun – and a way of promoting more great but underexposed literature? Isn't that what the whole thing is supposed to be about?

I was squirming with embarrassment by the time she finished – and in a strange way felt quite sorry for Julian Barnes. All those years he'd been waiting for his Booker, and he had to accept it from a judge who had just debased almost the entire process. Mind you, as he suavely noted, the cheque must have been some consolation. Also, there's no denying that Rimington achieved one of her primary purposes: she certainly made the whole thing entertaining. It was pretty much the best TV I've seen since the Bee Gees walked out on Clive Anderson.