Tuesday night and another party for our new Mayor, as Boris attended the radio industry’s annual gong-fest, the Sony Radio Awards.
Johnson joined a few hundred producers, presenters, managers and agents in the (somewhat warm) Great Room of the Grosvenor House Hotel on London’s Park Lane, to hand out the Radio Academy’s Community Award. A little lacklustre, the Mayor did at least find fun in the fact that the winner was Lights out London, by Capital Radio.
It was a deservedly great night for the BBC World Service, which picked up four golds, for Newshour (The News & Current Affairs Programme Award), World Have Your Say (The Listener Participation Award), Owen Bennett-Jones (The News Journalist of the Year) and the brilliant Bangladesh Boat Project (The Multiplatform Radio Award) which deserves all the plaudits it gets, for a clever use of Twitter, Flickr, Google Maps and more.
Elsewhere at the ceremony, Chris Moyles’s parents were brought on stage to present their son with his Breakfast Show Award. Unfortunately Moyles didn’t have the grace and wit to make the most out of the surprise, but instead fell back on his standard self-indulgent, churlish fare.
More heartening was a wonderful thank-you to the BBC’s departing Director of Audio and Music (that’s radio to us normal people). Jenny Abramski is leaving the Corporation to chair the National Lottery Heritage Fund and her old commercial foe Ralph Bernard presented her with a Special Award and a loving tribute to 39 and a half years of working in radio.
While Simon Mayo picked up an extremely well deserved gold for Speech Broadcaster of the Year, Jon Ronson and Geoff Lloyd were robbed of the glory that should have been theirs in the Feature Award and Music Personality categories.
Finally, the Academy’s special Gold Award went to a familiar voice on Radio 2 and the Light Programme before that, Brian Matthew, who closed the night with a funny but moving speech.
