Radio Oscars turn on the glitz

Chris Tarrant pleaded with radio bosses on cost-cutting

By media correspondent Torin Douglas

The Sony Awards are always described as Radio's Oscars - and the organisers do their best to make the event as glitzy and celeb-ridden as the Hollywood original. This year was no exception.

Well over 1,000 of radio's finest - in black tie, designer frocks and the occasional dressed-down pair of jeans - crammed into London's Grosvenor House Hotel to drink, eat, and celebrate their peers' success (in that order).

With five nominees in each category and only one winner, they also got to drown their sorrows when their rivals got the prize.

This year's event was hosted by Paul Gambaccini, who enlivened a previous Sony Awards ceremony with some very choice language.

He got his own comeuppance this year when the actor and occasional stand-up Keith Allen took to the stage to present the award for best radio feature, and started making disparaging remarks about the entries and Gambaccini himself.

Keith Allen: Disparaging remarks about entries

A heckler who suggested he was not funny got short shrift - but Gambaccini got his own back when Allen returned to his seat, pointing out that the next prize - the Short Form Award - should have been won by the not very tall Allen.

Plenty of other non-radio celebrities had been signed up to help present the awards - from the worlds of music, film, television and politics.

They included chart-toppers Travis, St Etienne and - from classical music - Bond, the film director Lord Attenborough, the Beatles producer Sir George Martin, and actors Alan Rickman and Gina Bellman.

Ten O'Clock News presenter Michael Buerk, comics Sir Norman Wisdom and Arabella Weir, and Olympic oarsman Matthew Pinsent were also on hand.

From the world of politics came Culture Secretary Chris Smith and the drugs tsar Keith Hellawell.

Sir Norman was fresh back from his latest triumph in Albania, where he is a bigger star than David Beckham and Posh Spice put together.

Sir Norman Wisdom: Enlivened proceedings

He enlivened the proceedings by tripping on to the stage, in traditional fashion, and then dampened them again with an exceedingly long joke, before finally announcing who had won the comedy award (Radio 4's Dead Ringers).

Terry Wogan and Chris Tarrant were among the undoubted stars of radio who picked up awards.

Capital FM's Tarrant won a standing ovation and made a plea to radio bosses not to fall into the trap of cutting costs by using pre-recorded shows and playlists.

"We must keep the spontaneity," he said.

"When the next Kenny Everett comes along, you must welcome him - not ask him to pre-record all his links into a computer."

If there was a "next Kenny Everett" in the room, it may have been a local radio presenter, who made history by winning three Sonys in one year - the first broadcaster ever to do so.

We must keep the spontaneity

Chris Tarrant

Jon Gaunt of BBC Three Counties Radio won his awards for coverage of a huge local story - the closure of the Vauxhall car plant at Luton.

As ever, however, there was one characteristic of the Oscars that the Sony Awards managed to emulate all too successfully.

The ceremony over-ran by about an hour, leaving the audience desperate for food, since two-thirds of the awards were presented before the main course.

Picking up the prize for UK station of the year, Radio 2 controller Jim Moir - a man of reassuringly ample proportions - said: "I've never waited longer between a starter course and the entree in my life - and I'm a man who knows about these things."