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British Comedy Awards
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The British Comedy Awards is an annual awards ceremony in the United Kingdom celebrating notable comedians and entertainment performances of the previous year.
awards were shown live on ITV in December from 1990 to 2006, after which the broadcast of the British Comedy Awards 2007 was suspended by ITV due to allegations of irregularities and deception in the awarding of the 2005 People's Choice Award and then ongoing related investigations about the 2007 British television phone-in scandal resulting in Ofcom's subsequently fining ITV a record £5.675 million for its misuse of premium-rate telephone lines.
After Michael Parkinson presented the inaugural ceremony at the London Palladium in December 1990, subsequent shows have been presented by Jonathan Ross, staged at London Studios, and produced by Michael Hurll Television (MHTV), whose parent company is Unique Communications Group.
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Encyclopedia
The British Comedy Awards is an annual awards ceremony in the United Kingdom celebrating notable comedians and entertainment performances of the previous year.
History
The awards were shown live on ITV in December from 1990 to 2006, after which the broadcast of the British Comedy Awards 2007 was suspended by ITV due to allegations of irregularities and deception in the awarding of the 2005 People's Choice Award and then ongoing related investigations about the 2007 British television phone-in scandal resulting in Ofcom's subsequently fining ITV a record £5.675 million for its misuse of premium-rate telephone lines.
After Michael Parkinson presented the inaugural ceremony at the London Palladium in December 1990, subsequent shows have been presented by Jonathan Ross, staged at London Studios, and produced by Michael Hurll Television (MHTV), whose parent company is Unique Communications Group. Jonathan Ross announced that he would not be presenting the 2008 awards, in light of the Russell Brand Show prank telephone calls row and was replaced by Angus Deayton.
The 2007 show occurred on 6 December 2007, but was not televised due to the 2005 controversy and subsequent investigations. The most recent ceremony was shown live on 6 December 2008. Compliance for the show is the responsibility of the ITV Compliance Unit of ITV Network Limited (consisting of members from ITV plc, SMG plc, UTV Media plc, and
Channel Television Ltd).
Highlights
- At the 1992 ceremony the show was running three minutes ahead of schedule. Jonathan Ross then urged Paul Merton on stage who finished off the broadcast with a few jokes
- 1993: Award-presenter Julian Clary joked that he'd "just been fisting Norman Lamont" (the joke caused great controversy and nearly ended Clary's career).
- 1994: Spike Milligan called long-time fan Prince Charles a "grovelling little bastard" on hearing the Prince's tribute to him when he came to the podium to collect his Lifetime Achievement Award.
- 2000: Nigel Hawthorne accepted a lifetime achievement award on behalf of Alan Bennett only to be greeted by a drunken Caroline Aherne yelling "Get on with it!" during his recount of Mr Bennett's statement. Hawthorne took it to heart, prompting the audience to cheer after his retort of "Would you like to come do this yourself madame?"
- Also in 2004 award presenter Johnny Vegas shattered the record for longest speech by going into one of his trademark rants which lasted over 10 minutes before finally announcing the nominations
- In 2006 the show caused controversy when a live snake was brought on stage and almost escaped into the audience
- In 2008 the shows was interupted a few times by heckles from the audience, most memorably from Kevin Bishop throwing rubbish at The Inbetweeners producers.
- In 2008, Angus Deayton poked fun countless times at the ridiculousness of the Sachsgate affair, often receiving applause from the audience.
Past Winners
For a complete list of winners from 1991-2008, see British Comedy Awards Winners.
Controversy
Investigation of alleged irregularities and deception
At the 2005 British Comedy Awards show, the wrong show received the People's Choice Award. The award was "mistakenly given" to Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway even though The Catherine Tate Show received the most tabulated votes and should have been declared the winner, and Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly (Ant & Dec) were asked to return their 2005 award.
Charged by the awards show with investigating the allegations of irregularities, the independent law firm Olswang summarized its findings as follows: "Robbie Williams was invited to present an award. It was understood that he would be happy [to do so] if the recipients were Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. In order to ensure his attendance, this assurance was given. But it could not be definitively established that Williams' involvement led to the wrong winner being announced" [italics added].
Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway received the People's Choice Award 2006 at the British Comedy Awards 2006.
Phone-in scandal
Beginning on 26 July 2007, British tabloid newspapers reported the alleged involvement of the British Comedy Awards in the 2007 British television phone-in scandal. According to a report in the The Sun, viewers telephoned a premium-rate number to vote for the People's Choice Award in the 2005 Awards during what was claimed to be a live broadcast; yet, at 22:30, the show went to a news broadcast, so that when the show returned, viewers thought it was still live, and thus still phoned the number, when the last half-hour was in fact a recording as the vote had already finished, rendering the call-in votes given during the recording pointless and a misuse of the callers' money.
ITV announced that they have postponed the British Comedy Awards 2007 due to the voting irregularities. In a statement, the company said: "Pending conclusion of the investigation, broadcast of the British Comedy Awards 2007 will be postponed. ... ITV will not make any further comment regarding this matter until the conclusion of the investigation."
It was announced on 21 September 2007 that the British Comedy Awards 2007 would not be screened by ITV1; however, it was not confirmed then that the Awards would still take place in December, and it was not ruled out that they could be screened by another channel. The 2007 awards did take place on 5 December 2007, but that show was not televised. In early May 2008 Ofcom announced its fining and sanctioning ITV plc in a press release.
On 15 August 2008, it was announced that a similar scandal could have been committed in the award ceremony in 2004 Awards.
Following the Russell Brand Show prank telephone calls row and his 12 week unpaid suspension from all of his BBC shows, Jonathan Ross resigned from presenting the 2008 awards, in agreement with ITV, as he did not want to "take away from the awards themselves or the many talented winners of the awards." Angus Deayton replaced Jonathan Ross as the host of the British Comedy Awards.
See also
External links
- – Official website hosted by Unique Communications Group, the parent company of British Comedy Awards producer Michael Hurll Television (MHTV); site provides annual lists of winners.
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