Back from the Comedy Awards do

Back from the British Comedy Awards, and wondering if a tree falls in a forest (the British Comedy Awards happens) and no one's around (it's not broadcast), can anyone hear it (erm, well will anyone see it?)? Well they said on the night that actually they might screen it at some point, but I reckon it's probably going to gather dust somewhere before eventually being taped over with an episode of Deal or No Deal (is it right to call that an episode? there's a sort of plot, so I suppose it is...)

Anyway, the winners list is available at www.chortle.co.uk, so I won't go into that lot here. Suffice to say Not Going Out didn't win either award we were up for, but that was to be expected. We were pipped to the post by Gavin & Stacey for Best New Sitcom, and Lee lost out on Best Male Actor to David Mitchell from Peep Show. I don't think any of the wins on the night were that contestable - it was all in all a fair awards do, with little upset or incident. Which is a slight shame, as this the ceremony where Caroline Aherne heckled Nigel Hawthorne, and where Julian Clary did a fisting gag about Norman Lamont, and where Michael Barrymore unplugged an autocue, and where Spike Milligan called the heir to the throne "a grovelling little bastard". You expect a *few* tears and tantrums, surely. Well not tonight. Perhaps the fact that it wasn't being broadcast live took a bit of the edge off it. Who knows.

So, what can I report that the Chortle news story can't? Well, I can report that the goody-bag contained an Al Murray dvd that I was thinking of buying, so that saved me a tenner. I had a nice little chat with a woman called JK Rowling, who has apparently written some books. Jonathan Ross got her to sign a book, which turned out to be The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. Ha. I met the producer whose book it now is, and took a photo on my phone of what she wrote - if I can work out how to upload a photo from my phone, I'll post it here... anyway, you won't hear on telly what she actually wrote, so I can exclusively reveal that instead of an autograph, she wrote, "I wish I'd written this." Yeah, and I bet he'd written Harry Potter too.

Stephen Fry gave a great non-funny acceptance speech, and Liz Smith got a standing ovulation. One leading comedy personality who lost out an award was heard to tell his writers that it was their fcking fault, but I think that was a joke. And I saw Stephen Mangan and Graham Norton kiss on the lips, but only briefly. I'm really struggling for gossip, you can tell.

Alright I'll tell you one thing I heard - which is that this phone-rigging malarkey is nothing new. I was told that years ago, when phone voting just began, a certain entertainment show was up for People's Choice award, so viewers had a good month or so to phone in to support their favourite show. So whenever this show had a on-air competition, as they did often, they would put up their voting phone number instead of the compeition line, for about five minutes, then say "Sorry - that's the wrong number - whoopsy." They did this for a good 3 weeks, and quelle surprise, on the night they had three times more votes than anyone else and took away the award. Never questioned, never caught, never found out. Simpler times, I'm sure.

I am now off to Holland for the best part of a week. Blogging, Scrabble and facebook status updates shall cease till then...