Martyn Goff's bad Booker beat

Martyn Goff, the administrator of the Booker Prize since 1969, has finally retired. He went gladly but not quietly, happily (it seems) sharing his experiences on the job with a few journalists. See here and here, for example.

Although I'm very interested in others' views of when the Booker was wrongly decided--see here, here, and here--I dared not hope to learn of Goff's view of the worst Booker beat.

But Mark Sanderson of the Daily Telegraph asked Goff which winner didn't deserve the prize and, surprisingly, Goff answered:

'William Golding's Rites of Passage in 1980,' came Mr Goff's prompt reply. 'Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers is an infinitely superior work.'

--Marshal Zeringue