Rating:★★★★☆
Marina Hyde’s zest for life and quick wit means when listening to her talk, you’re entirely engaged in her honest, open comedic commentary on the world around us. Listening to her feels less like attending a formal literary event, and more like catching up with a ridiculously intelligent mate you’ve known all your life.
It was no different last night at Sheffield’s Octagon Centre, where the ex-Guardian columnist arrived to dissect her new satirical book: What a Time to Be Alive! Scenes from a Strange Age. Writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie – who filled in for Jon Crace – quizzed her on the absurdities of the modern zeitgeist, the event offered a welcome haven of silliness and levity amid a frankly bleak political era. Impressively, the late-notice substitute pairing didn’t cause friction, and Hyde and Maconie’s conversation flowed fairly seamlessly.
Though she has undeniable celebrity status, she veers far away from the snooty celeb trope, instead claiming to operate firmly in the “audience business”. It’s her grounded unpretentious personality that lets her descriptive anecdotes land so effectively, which is affirmed by numerous nods, giggles and gasps. Whether that’s painting colourful pictures like Elon Musk being “the weird kid at school” or jesting about Keir Starmer having the worst seat in the house in a fancy London restaurant, only weeks after his resignation, remarking “That’s showbiz baby”; the way she keeps her observational style thoroughly relatable means listeners feel entirely like a fly on the wall at these fancy restaurants and parties that we’d otherwise have no access to.
What captured the room the most, I think, was the way she wove razor-sharp jokes and anecdotes seamlessly throughout what otherwise might be considered quite dense political dialogue, such as things she names “seriously concerning”, like the rise of AI. But her jokes never feel abrupt or out of place, even when dissecting scandals or matters of national crisis. Instead, her charm keeps the room entirely on her side, giving us backdoor passes to powerful spaces from The Guardian newsrooms to conversations with Alistair Campbell.
The sheer range of topics Hyde naturally flits through during the hour is commendable – although, it’s fair to say just fifteen-minutes of audience questions is a little on the shorter side. Regardless, she manoeuvres effortlessly from football culture to the intricacies of UK and US politics, before landing squarely on the topic at the front of the country’s mind at the moment: The Celebrity Traitors. Maconie proved a good conversation foil, keeping the tone witty, warm and grounded for the Sheffield crowd, despite the slight sense of a time limit.
Ultimately, this Off The Shelf event proved why Hyde remains one of the sharpest, most essential commentators of our time. She can do both wit and wisdom. It was a brilliantly comical, sharply observed evening that turned the madness of modern news into pure entertainment, proving how even in the “Strange Age”, taking news seriously doesn’t mean you can’t take it comically.
