C4 wins four BAFTAs, including award for Paralympics coverage

Channel 4’s ground-breaking coverage of The London 2012 Paralympic Games (produced by Sunset & Vine and IMG Sports Media) won the BAFTA for Sport and Live Event at last night’s awards, one of four awards won by the Broadcaster.

The award is the icing on a giant gooey cake of happiness and sporting brilliance – Channel 4’s coverage of the games drew record-breaking viewing figures, and is credited with contributing to a sea-change in attitudes towards disability and disabled sport in this country.

The theme of triumph over adversity is also writ large in Made in Chelsea (Monkey), where some of the contributors grew up without weekend country houses. However, their hardships will be easier to bear this morning, after the programme won the BAFTA for Reality and Constructed Factual. The award is recognition for a programme that is consistently hugely entertaining, and filled with beautiful people. What more do you need?

Talk of beautiful people always brings us to the delectable Alan Carr, who won the BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance for Alan Carr: Chatty Man (Open Mike). Everyone loves a bit of Alan, right?

The fourth BAFTA went to All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry (Seneca Productions) in the Specialist Factual category. The series was a fascinating and brilliantly original look at class and taste in this country.

Now, how’s this for spin: The award for the Paralympics alone means that you could see more hours of BAFTA-winning telly on Channel 4 than any other broadcaster last year (almost 500 hours).

If you think that’s shameless, we’re also claiming the Special Award for Clare Balding as one of our own (she anchored our coverage of the Paralympics, and fronts Channel 4 Racing). And while we’re at it, double-BAFTA-winner Olivia Colman is basically a Channel 4 discovery, and will be on our screens in new drama Run on Channel 4 this summer.

Look, one way or another, we basically won all the BAFTAs last night. ‘BAFTA clean sweep as C4 wins the lot’. You can use that one, if you like.