Legendary literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki went to the big gala where they handed out the major German TV awards and told people he was going to reject the “honorary” one awarded to him, because what they showed on TV was mostly “disgusting”. The moderator managed to somehow save face for everybody by suggesting to have a multi-channel TV show with Reich-Ranicki to talk about the issues (story; video - both unfortunately in German only; you can probably easily tell who is who in the image above). Pric/zeless!

Update: Here are some English-language reports: “A high profile German TV prize ceremony took an unexpected turn when one of Germany’s oldest and most respected television personalities refused to accept his award and denounced the whole event as ‘rubbish.’” (source) “‘I don’t belong here among all this rubbish,’ ranted the éminence grise of German literary criticism, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, as he stood in front of the nation’s television industry to collect his lifetime achievement prize at the weekend. The award show’s producers raised their eyebrows and dug their nails into their palms. The audience cringed, but the 88-year-old continued his angry rant against the poor quality of German television, suffering a coughing fit in the process. […] The Polish-born writer was not, of course, referring to his talkshow, The Literary Quartet, which ran for 13 years and turned him into Germany’s most prominent and controversial literary critic, but rather to the slew of casting shows, cheap soap operas, supermodel searches, game shows and reality shows that makes up most German television. In truth the programming is not really any worse than the fare offered by any other European country.” (source)