We watched the National Television Awards last night. If you were following our Twitter account, it would have been very easy to tell.
The show kicked off with Dermot O’Leary taking a crash course in survival skills with Bear Grylls. No sooner had we speculated that Dermot may be on course to drink his own wee than the dreaded bottle appeared.
And then that opening song! Gloria Gaynor took to the stage with a mashup of I Will Survive and Survivor. You could hear the whole audience singing along. It was – apologies for the choice of word – glorious to watch. She wasn’t the only musical performer to take the stage, mind. We got a very 80s throwback from former X Factor contestant Fleur East, in the form of her new single.
Speaking of the X word… my, wasn’t that awkward. Dermot shoehorned his ‘ex’ factor into proceedings so many times that we wondered if he was okay. He introduced Fleur’s performance like it was his last music show hurrah. Shayne Ward winning Best Newcomer can’t have helped.
Another casualty was the Channel 4 Twitter account, which descended into a sort of wallowing melancholy as the night went on. C4 sadly did not do well in the nominations. Even E4 gave them a dig when The Big Bang Theory won its category and Humans didn’t.
Without question, the highlight of our evening was watching comedy genius Billy Connolly get the Special Recognition Award he so rightly deserves. Peter Kay made good on dedicating his award properly, we all went ‘aaahhhh’, and it was lovely.
Runner up for our own ‘best moments’ award was Danny Dyer’s simply amazing acceptance speech. A more gracious, effusive and tipsy winner we have never seen. Shame he got the year of his own conception wrong, something his Mum was all too eager to point out.
Now it’s all over until next year. Will Ant & Dec make it 16 years in a row? Will all of the categories finally be dominated by Netflix? Will Rylan Clark finally win the Best Presenter award? Only 364 days until we find out…
