National Television Awards
My housemate is a set designer for television — he has worked on such shows as Stars in their Eyes, Blind Date and the all time classic Supermarket Sweep. He also does a lot of one-off shows and premieres.
Recently he did the UK’s National Television Awards — a viewer-voted awards show. For us australians it is similar in style (and substance) to the logies.
So when he offered me a free ticket I jumped at the chance. It was held at the Albert Hall, and broadcast live over ITV. Shaun’s family were here for it and staying at our place, which was packed full of people for a couple of days before. We all met at 6:30 on the night and went straight to the barr for a couple of stiff drinks.
The show itself was quite strange — because of course being Australian I didn’t know any of the so-called celebrities :-) It was quite bizarre seeing the 12 year old girls racing down to the front to try for autographs of what appeared to me to be random people whose main distinction was the fact that they were extraordinarily badly dressed.
I did recognise a couple of people — Graham Norton, Ant & Dec (who won most of the awards for comedy for about the millionth year running), the guy who hosts “Who wants to be a millionare”, Ozzy’s daughter, who was there to give and award — but mostly they could have been anyone.
There was a surprise was at the end though. The presenter for the show was Trevor McDonald and he was given a special lifetime achievement award. As a newcaster and journalist, they chose a politician to give the award — namely Prime Minister Blair. Now one of Shaun’s friends, who I was sitting next to at the time, is an academic studying politics. I was feeling uncomfortable being caught clapping while Blair was on stage given the current situation. Shaun’s friend was much more pro-active though - as the audience quietened he called out at the top of his voice “Stop the war”.
Five minutes later, when he turned on his mobile phone he got an SMS from a friend who had been watching the show — “Was that you?”. So I guess a small point was made.