Channel 4 toasts BAFTA success

Last night, we popped on our Man at C&A tux, necked a couple of Babychams and headed down to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for a night of unfettered glory courtesy of our friends at BAFTA, We won six awards on the night – seven if you include Jon Snow’s BAFTA Fellowship – more than any other single channel.

Channel 4’s factual output did stonkingly well, cleaning up like a Tory in Southeast England. The Paedophile Hunter won the Single Documentary BAFTA, while the Current Affairs Award went to Children on the Frontline, a Channel 4 Dispatches.

The Specialist Factual BAFTA went to Grayson Perry: Who Are You?, and The Island with Bear Grylls won the Reality and Constructed Factual Award. And Grand Designs, now in its 14th series, won its first ever BAFTA, in the Features category. The show simply gets better with age, like a fine milk.

Matt Berry won the award for Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme, for Toast of London, making him the toast of London. We have just won the award for most obvious and dreadful joke in a press release.

And finally, Jon Snow was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship, the organisation’s highest accolade, recognising his 40 years of service to television journalism. In that time, he has reported on everything from the release of Nelson Mandela to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has also single-handedly kept the tie industry solvent.

Channel 4 could also reasonably lay claim to a share of several other awards. Jeff Pope, winner of the BAFTA Special Award, Exec Produced Mo Mowlam biopic “Mo” for Channel 4, while many of the other winners have watched Channel 4, and absolutely all of them were four-years-old once.

So, you see, they all sort of belong to us, really. But particularly seven of them. Or was it six? To tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself. Either way, we do indeed feel lucky, and our day is certainly made.