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For years and years, the every-Sunday thing for my wife, Laurie, and I was to have dinner with our friends Betsy Beers and Bruce Cormicle.

For example, some of my best games for Celtic came after nights out where we had won something and were allowed to have a couple of beers, but I don't know what to expect here.

In Western Sydney, an audience of Stetson-wearing Australians are sitting in their fold-up camping chairs, swigging beers and eating a spiralled fried potato on a skewer known as a 'chip on a stick'.

The biography prize went to Laura Beers for “Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century.”

Beers, who was surprised by the win, said the world “seems to become slightly more Orwellian with each passing day.”