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June Spencer (Peggy Archer) shines at the 2014 BBC Audio Drama Awards

2014-01-27T17:23:02+00:00

This weekend saw the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, one of the two most famous radio plays ever written (the other being Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds). It is also the 90^thbirthday year of Radio Drama on the BBC. But those weren't the only anniversaries celebrated at the third BBC Audio Drama Awards.

June Spencer collects the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2014 BBC Audio Drama Awards

This year June Spencer marks an amazing 70 years of acting in radio drama. She first appeared on radio in 1943 and has become known to millions of radio listeners as Peggy Archer, first playing the matriarch of the Ambridge clan in the pilot episodes of The Archers in 1950. June is the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Audio Drama Award, presented by Director-General Tony Hall. In her speech June graciously remembered her many colleagues past and present, including Arnold Peters who played her late husband Jack Woolley.

As Head of Audio Drama for the BBC, the awards occupy a corner of my brain all year round, a corner which gets bigger the closer we get to January and then becomes all-consuming. This year I managed to persuade Lenny Henry to be our Master of Ceremonies. Lenny has a long history with the BBC, and more recently with radio drama as writer of the dramas Corrinne Come Back and Gone and Miss You Still. I spend much of January inviting supporters and contributors to be award-givers: most of them are delighted to be asked but they’re also very busy people so I’m delighted when they say yes. This year, they included Fiona Shaw and Stephen Tompkinson (each of whom also judged a category), writers Howard Brenton and Mark Ravenhill and actors Philip Glenister, Alison Steadman and Jessica Raine.

You can read a full list of winners, see photos and hear clips from the ceremony here.

You can also hear a selection of nominees and winners on Radio 4 over the coming weeks:

• Billions (winner of Best Audio Drama – Single) will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 11th February 2014 at 2.15pm.

• The Sleeper (nominated for Best Audio Drama – Single) will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 8th February 2014 at 2.30pm.

• The Gestapo Minutes (nominated for Best Audio Drama – Single) will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 12th February 2014 at 2.15pm.

• Sketchorama: Absolutely Special (winner of Best Scripted Comedy with an Audience) will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 10th February 2014 at 11pm.

Listen to June Spencer interviewed on Woman's Hour after receiving the award

Read more about June's award at The Archers blog

BBC Food and Farming Awards - An Update

2013-06-21T13:56:41+00:00

We’ve big news about the next BBC Food & Farming Awards!

Usually at this time of year we’d be asking you to send in your nominations in our annual search for the best of British food and drink; from food producers to retailers, dinner ladies to street food cooks and farmers to drinks producers.

This year marks a departure for the awards we launched with the support of HRH, The Prince of Wales, back in 2000. Each year they’ve grown; both in terms of the range of food and drink categories we cover, to the number of nominations you send us.

This year, to reflect the continued rise in food and drink ideas across the UK, the growth of businesses and food projects in towns and cities in every region, we’ve ambitions to make these awards even bigger.

We want to raise their profile to ensure they reach as big an audience as possible and to ensure the awards provide the biggest platform yet in order to celebrate the people, businesses and organisations whose valuable work often receives little or no recognition.

The first big change is that the Awards will become a spring event and so we’ll be starting the nominations process later. This means we can stage our annual ceremony at time when food production in Britain is gearing up, and a time of year when we provide you with a far more adventurous and exciting ceremony.

And that’s where the other big change comes in. Our venue for the Food & Farming Awards in May 2014 will be Colston Hall in Bristol. It’s a prestigious theatre in a city that reflects many of the exciting trends in food and drink underway in the UK, from inspirational community work to a vibrant hub for new and young businesses. Most of all, this venue will allow us to have the highest level of public participation ever seen in the history of the awards.

We’re also starting to plan a wide range of public events based around the BBC Food & Farming Awards, and across Bristol, that will allow us to celebrate, share and demonstrate stories of British food and farming.

In the next few months, through the Food Programme, our websites and other BBC output we’ll start to outline in more detail the plans we’re developing for the Awards and other events next May in Bristol, how this year’s nominations process will run and also explaining how you can get involved. We think it will be worth the wait.

Listen to 2012's Food and Farming Awards

The Food Programme

The BBC International Short Story Award

2012-01-26T17:26:52+00:00

With just a month to go until entries close for this year's BBC International Short Story Award, it's really exciting to see that the Costa Awards too are going to celebrate and reward short story writers next year. It's great news for short story writers and their audiences, and yet more tangible evidence of how radically the landscape has changed over the last decade.

When we began the campaign to launch the BBC National Short Story Award, the genre was not only overlooked, but in severe danger of terminal decline. While stories remained on air, the chances of publishing them were diminishing everywhere. I recall one of our past judges, the award winning writer Naomi Alderman, telling me she was advised by her tutor at UEA never to write a short story if she could possibly manage a novel. What publisher was really going to be interested? And how could you garner attention without prizes or earn a living without outlets?

It's beginning to feel as though the art of short story writing - a precise, honed and difficult craft that is as challenging as any novel - really is getting the recognition it deserves. And it is gratifying to have been part of what turned the tide! The BBC National Short Story Award has played a real part in changing attitudes - and there are some palpable illustrations of how the lives of some of our winning and short listed writers have been changed too.

D W Wilson, who at 26 was our youngest ever winner last year, has now had his first collection (previously only available in Canada) bought by Bloomsbury in 2012; 'Once You Break a Knuckle' published in April this year. It will sit alongside at least four other short story collections at Bloomsbury, including Jon McGregor's brilliantly titled collection 'This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You.' - a volume which contains not one but two stories which have been fantastic Runners Up.
At the same time the annual anthology of the Award's shortlist regularly sell over 2000 copies.

Meanwhile I've been having fun working with another previous winner, Julian Gough, for the second time. Two years ago we dramatised a short story of Julian's about boom and bust; this time he's written from scratch a story about the sovereign debt crisis. It may not sound a subject for humour but he's turned it into a comedy that throws a new light on the current economic situation. Listen out for it - starring Dermot Crowley, Rory Keenan and Stephanie Flanders - on the 28th February.

Tonight Tessa Hadley - one of our judges last year - celebrates the publication of her new collection Married Love. You can hear five stories from that on the new Short Story Zone on Radio 4 Extra in March; this week Lucy Wood's lovely and magical stories Diving Belles are on in the same slot, and listen out for Roshi Fernando very soon.

2012 will be an exciting year for the BBC Award - with an opportunity for writers in English from all over the world to enter in this Olympic year. This September we'll have ten rather than five short stories on air, and a chance to hear all the writers on Front Row. As the entries roll in from around the world, it's clear it's going to be a good year for the short story on all fronts, with the lovely added bonus of Costa being there too very soon.

Di Speirs is Editor, Readings at BBC Radio 4

Radio 4 at the Sony Awards

2011-05-10T15:36:00+00:00

It was the Sony Radio Academy Awards last night ("the radio industry's equivalent of the Oscars"). Here's where you can hear this year's gold winners from Radio 4 which were cunningly rescheduled into some of the station's repeat slots when the nominees were announced.

The winner of the best speech programme award was Infinite Monkey Cage which we've featured on the blog before. The new series starts on BBC Radio 4, Monday May 30th at 4.30pm (repeated on Tuesday evenings at 11pm) for 6 weeks. In the meantime you can listen to some earlier episodes via the Radio 4 podcast page.

Matthew Price won news journalist of the year for his work for Radio 4. You can listen to one of his recent reports on the Syrian protests.

The winner of the best feature was Heel, Toe, Step Together made by Falling Tree. Heel, Toe, Step Together (pictured above, Bob Hill) "tells the story of two people who met at an East London market one day and the unlikely friendship that blossomed through dance" and you can listen to it again at 13.30 this Sunday, the 15th May on Radio 4 and for seven days after that on iPlayer.

For the judges the winner of best drama Every Child Matters is a story that "drew them in whilst portraying the reality of the contradictions, conflicts and complexities facing the professional staff working in child protection". You can hear Every Child Matters this Thursday at 14.15 and for seven days after that on iPlayer.

Jenni Murray won the gold award, a 'special award that lies within the gift of the Committee'. This is what the Guardian said:

'On a night when female winners were thin on the ground, Radio 4's Woman's Hour presenter Jenni Murray received the prestigious gold award. The judges said it rewarded a "career of exemplary broadcasting, for her incisive yet sensitive interviewing skills, her championship of the woman's perspective and the inspiration she has given to others".'

On this Thursday's Woman's Hour Jenni Murray talks to Kate McCann about the ongoing search for her daughter.

Paul Murphy is the acting editor of the Radio 4 blog

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On the 5live blog you can listen to some of 5live's winning submissions and read 7 Sony Gold Awards for 5 live

Taking care of those who might fall through the gaps

2010-12-08T20:04:06+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wh1dk

You always feel nervous at 7.55am when you are waiting for the Vicar's Radio 4 Christmas Appeal to go out on air - will the phones really start ringing any second. But I need not have worried, our Radio 4 listeners don't let us down - they were ringing to give to this the 84th annual appeal all day on Sunday.

The Reverend Nicholas Holtam says: "The volunteers answering the phones were marvellous. I kept hearing snippets of conversation. Someone gave £5, someone else £1,000, I was really struck that as the volunteers left at the end of their shift answering the phones they nearly all said, "Thank you. It is a privilege to be able to help." This is a very personal appeal with a lot of warmth and generosity."

Many were moved by the story in Received with Thanks, Libby Purves' report back programme how the money from the appeal is spent, of the homeless man who gives his shoes to an older homeless man whose shoes had been stolen. One listener wrote a cheque but also sent two pairs of men's shoes with a note which read: "I hope you can make good use of these - I wish you well."

Others liked hearing from Rosemary Morgan who first heard the Christmas Appeal when she was growing up in Wales, "it touched a spot" and she has been giving to it ever since. She is now 81 years old. The current vicar of St Martins thinks she must have been listening to the Rev Eric Loveday who was at the church from 1941-1947.

If you haven't seen Jamie Winter's photographs and slideshow do spare a couple of minutes to take a look. We knew we wanted to put a slideshow together for this year's appeal and the idea emerged to give clients at the Connection disposable cameras. A photography group was set up and very quickly we realised how powerful these pictures were. Now that photography group has won the Talk Talk Digital Heroes award.

Ben Richardson who runs the group said: "the group are bowled over - it's a huge recognition and everyone is very excited about the potential for doing something in the new year... it opens doors."

These pictures have the power to reveal to us things we don't know about homelessness. Libby Purves says:

Meeting people at the Connection is always fascinating and - despite the harshness of the lives they have come from - oddly heartening. It is extraordinary to meet a young man like Jamie, emerging from a loneliness and alienation so traumatic that he did not speak for months, and find him friendly, creative, and above all filled with hope that he will have a home and a job before long. His achievement - still in progress - is considerable, but so is the achievement of those who over those long months stuck by Jamie, encouraged him, and suggested outlets for his considerable gift of quirky creativity. I felt honoured that he was willing to talk to me and show me his witty, thoughtful photographs.

Sally Flatman is producer of The Radio 4 Appeal

The Vicar's Christmas Appeal will be repeated at 3.25 on Thursday afternoon Make a donation on the Radio 4 web site.
Received with Thanks will repeat at 3.45 on Thursday afternoon.
Pictures by The Connection's photography group are on Flickr.
The BBC Radio 4 Appeal has a Facebook page. Like the page for updates on the weekly appeal which raised a total of £1.5M for 52 charities last year.
Picture of telephones by Dan Brady. Some rights reserved.

Radio 4 in Cheltenham and the Nick Clarke Award

2010-10-19T08:10:29+00:00

Last week R4 was dominated by Chilean miners and Cheltenham chatterers. The most original take on the miners' story must go to Broadcasting House on Sunday which read from Edgar Allan Poe's tale about being buried alive. Further unintentional echoes reached me, in an item that moved me to tears, from an underground bomb shelter in Coventry in John Waite's Pick of the Week when Michael Logan spoke of what happened to him and his family that day so long ago.

I spent the run up to the week in Cheltenham at the literary festival feasting on some of Radio 4's cultural gems and thinking about my former colleague, Nick Clarke, missing again his familiar voice on Radio 4. I was privileged to work with Nick on occasional current affairs programmes and his character and principles infused his programmes- the best broadcasters bring all of themselves to the airwaves; that is partly why they become a real presence in the lives of listeners, and especially so with the intimacy of radio.

Nick's twin sons, Joel and Benedict, helped me read out the winner of the annual Nick Clarke Award for the best broadcast interview in the last year. It was PD James for her Today programme interview of the BBC Director General Mark Thompson. The crowd talked in the coffee shops and gardens about "Andy" and "Eddie" and we recorded programme after programme to capacity audiences in a huge tent: Start the Week, Open Book, Bespoken Word, Afternoon Readings, The Music group and The Nick Clarke Debate.

Eddie Mair got Tessa Jowell to think aloud about trying for London Mayor in the next election and Mariella Fostrup delivered my aside of the week to James Ellroy in an extraordinary Open Book interview. Ellroy talked about his memoir 'The Hilliker Curse' in which he describes his obsessive pursuit and domination of women following his mother's murder and insisted that he had now atoned - "So you say" was Mariella"s deadpan riposte.

Gwyneth Williams is Controller of BBC Radio 4

Listen to the award-winning interview, published here on the blog last week.
The picture shows Nick Clarke at work in the World at One studio in March 2002.

Six Sony Golds for Radio 4

2010-05-11T07:38:31+00:00

We had a good night at the Sonys - six Golds, four Silvers and five Bronzes (here's the full list).

Winning a Sony Gold can often be a career highlight and (no names) there were some awards last night, not just Radio 4 ones, that left a very big glow.

The margins on these occasions are rather fine. It is not obvious in most categories who is going to win. I sit at the table and try and pick the winner just before the roll call of honour is unveiled - and I don't get it right all the time. Far, far from it. Every now and then I am amazed by proceedings - sometimes pleasurably so - sometimes less so. But that is all part of the fun of the fair and I can say that I have judged the Sonys on several occasions and the judges take their work seriously. And the central Sony committee is impeccably chaired by Tim Blackmore.

It is the overall standard of Radio 4 that helps define the station. Everyone is spurred on by the demands of the audience and the standards the programme makers set for one another.

The Sonys take place at the Grosvenor House in Park Lane. There is no phone or Blackberry reception so I spent the evening in a febrile state (though repressed) trying to see where the politics of the nation was heading. The News teams broadly did not seem to be disappearing up and down stairs - so I assumed either that they too were blind to the outside world or that nobody has gone to the Palace. A correct assumption.

So - back on the election front - there will probably need to be more schedule changes to accommodate the drama. But keep with it - the coverage is good.

Mark Damazer is Controller of BBC Radio 4

The Sony Radio Academy Awards first took place in 1983 and are administered by trade body The Radio Academy. The full list of winners is on the web site and you can watch the awards ceremony (hosted by Chris Evans) too.
Radio 4's gold awards include 'best interview' for Jenni Murray's interview with dismissed Haringey director of social services Sharon Shoesmith. Listen to the interview here on the blog.

Shrt stry awrd - anncmnt Mnday

2009-12-03T16:48:38+00:00

Editor's note. Update: of course, the award has now been announced. Kate Clanchy is the winner. The Telegraph covered the announcement, as did The Guardian. Congratulations to Kate Clanchy! - SB

Not long now until our final meeting in a discreet London venue, to pick this year's winner. Which isn't going to be easy at all.

Meantime, not only are the stories going out on air each day at 1530 and available in the normal 'listen again' fashion - as are the five interviews with the authors on Front Row - but for the first time, and for two weeks only, we are able to offer the five stories as a podcast and as downloads for your MP3 player. It's very easy to do - just visit the series' podcast page where you'll find directions. Either subscribe to the podcast and get all five stories delivered to your MP3 player or right-click to download each story to your computer directly - to keep forever.

And the animated video clips, are all still available here. It's proved an interesting process finding visuals which reflect but don't distract from the audio - and my colleagues Rob and Hannah have done an excellent job I think. You can also check out Naomi Alderman's blog where she has written a lovely piece on her native Hendon.

And for those of you who prefer to read the stories in the old-fashioned way, Short Books have just published a beautiful anthology containing all five and an introduction from our Chair Tom Sutcliffe, which is available in all good book shops, and a perfect treat for Christmas.

As for me, I'm just going to re-read the stories one more time.

Di Speirs is Editor, Readings at BBC Radio 4

In the press, chair of judges and Front Row presenter Tom Sutcliffe wrote a hymn of praise to the short story for The Independent. Alison Flood in The Guardian remarked on the all-female shortlist. Janice Turner in The Times notes that although she can't remember her cleaner's second name, shortlisted author Kate Clanchy can and has written a whole book about hers. The South Yorkshire Star notes with pride that shortlisted author Jane Rogers teaches at the region's Sheffield Hallam University and the Manchester University press office is pleased to point out that faculty member Dr Jennifer Rowntree helped Sara Maitland with her shortlisted story The Moss Witch as part of 'a unique collaboration between scientists and authors'.
The winner will be announced live on next Monday's Front Row at 1915.
Story is a campaign for shorter stories. It's run by Book Trust, co-organisers of the awards.

The BBC National Short Story Award

2009-11-27T19:45:00+00:00

Hurrah! At last. After all the waiting, and the reading, and the deliberating we have at last reached the moment when we can reveal this year's short-list of five contenders for the BBC National Short Story Award (BBC NSSA). These five have survived the turbulent and exacting examination of first our teams of sifters and then, for those that made it through the first hoop, intense discussion and dissection by this year's judges - the writers, Dame Margaret Drabble and Helen Dunmore, the broadcaster Tom Sutcliffe, the singer-songwriter Will Young, and me.

The process of judging is a fascinating and sometimes unsettling one. As the summer progressed I read through my teetering pile of short stories. There were very short stories and those that almost tipped the 8000 word limit; there were first person monologues, futuristic visions, time travellers, llamas, historical adventures and not a few, often moving, parent-and-child stories. There were relationship breakdowns and tender endings to long marriages; a man who disappears, literally, in a fancy dress costume, a woman who disappears through the ice, an artist's glove that reappears as art. This year the quality of the writing and the names of the writers who now take this award seriously, were more impressive than ever.

Filtering the pile of sixty odd stories down to a long list is hard; conceding personal treasures and reaching a consensus on our final five took most of a pleasurable autumn's afternoon but of course one of the joys of this experience is re-assessing stories and uncovering new depths. Passionate defences of certain stories moved them up our list; general approval was not, in itself, sometimes enough. It was the most good-natured judging meeting I've been involved in but very rigorous as we debated futuristic feminism, and whether a monk's pursuit of an orphan over four pages qualified as a short story - even if it was wonderful writing (it almost did!), and, was too much plot actually a disguise for a proto-novel?

The other four judges are even now pondering and re-reading the final five and discussing them in the press - but in the Readings Unit a large part of the job only kicks in once we can get on with turning beautiful writing into equally beautiful radio. Casting the right voice is always the key element in production - these five stories were gifts - we set off in pursuit of the best of British and to everyone's joy secured just the actors we were after.

We needed someone to capture the nuances of North London's Hendon community - Miriam Margolyes is starring round the corner from Bush House (where we live) in Samuel Beckett's 'Endgame' - she was happy to emerge from her dustbin to read Naomi Alderman's 'Other People's Gods'. Julia MacKenzie abandoned the acuity of Miss Marple for the confusion of the protoganist in 'Hitting Trees with Sticks' by Jane Rogers - in a monologue of Bennettian perception. Two of our favourite and most long-standing of readers were instantly perfect casting for their two very different stories; Hannah Gordon has flavoured Sara Maitland's magical mix of science and witches with a heady Highland density in 'Moss Witch', and Penelope Wilton displays her customary restraint and compassion in Kate Clanchy's moving and original 'The Not-Dead and the Saved'. However it is probably fair to say that there was most excitement amongst the team here over the re-jigging of studios to fit in with the latest Harry Potter filming schedule, so that Jason Isaacs could transform briefly from the sinister Lucius Malfoy to a hapless middle-aged American son in Lionel Shriver's 'Exchange Rates'.

And now the whole experience is gathering speed as we head towards the culmination of our work - and the revelation on Monday 7th Dec of this year's winner. As well as a chance to hear the stories on air, there's the build up to the award ceremony, and terrific coverage of the short story genre and the award with interviews with Will, Tom, Margaret and Helen on air and in the press; Julian Gough, winner of the 2007 award, is tweeting, and for the first time, we have gone multi-platform. More on that on Monday - meantime Will Young and Tom Sutcliffe reveal the short-list and discuss the stories on tonight's (Friday's) edition of Front Row. They are a great selection - we hope you enjoy hearing them next week. And wondering which one will win.

Di Speirs is Editor, Readings at BBC Radio 4

The shortlist was revealed on this evening's Front Row, presented by Kirsty Lang.
Full details of the BBC National Short Story Award on the official web site.
The animated reading above is an excerpt from Other People's Gods by Naomi Alderman. View clips from the other shortlisted stories here.

Hooray for Henry!

2009-11-24T08:37:28+00:00

Lenny Henry has won the 'Outstanding Newcomer' award at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards - one of the best known drama awards in the U.K. He won it for playing Othello - his first Shakespearean role. Indeed his first drama role.

It is great news for him - but also for us. I saw him do it in Leeds - before the play came to the West End. He was excellent. The R4 connection is that Lenny ended up playing Othello after having done two feature programmes with producer Simon Elmes about his inital allergy to Shakespeare, and his increasing fascination with the plays. Which led him - on air - to learn about how best to recite iambic pentameter etc...

And out of that came the pursuit of Lenny by Barrie Rutter of Northern Broadsides to play the part. Bingo. We have recorded it for Radio 4 and it will transmit early next year. A treat.

Mark Damazer is Controller of BBC Radio 4

Mark wrote about Lenny's first attempt at Othello here on the blog back in March.
The Times covered Lenny's best newcomer win.

Radio 4 garlanded

2009-10-08T09:36:49+00:00

Last night The Voice of The Listener and Viewer - a group that campaigns for quality television and radio, whether from the BBC or elsewhere, garlanded Radio 4 programmes.

A large number of broadcasters - editors, controllers, commissioners, broadcasters - were asked to choose their five favourite radio or TV programmes over the past 25 years. The results were revealed last night at BAFTA in a small theatre full of broadcasting panjandrums - past and present. Hosted by Andrew Marr.

I had voted - for three radio programmes and two television ones. I will not reveal my radio choices. On the TV front I think I chose Edge of Darkness and Blackadder - or it may have been Newsnight or Channel 4 News. I can't quite remember.

Suffice to say Radio 4 did spectacularly - perhaps embarrassingly - well. Number 25 - Test Match Special. Number 16 - In Our Time. Number 13 - From Our Own Correspondent. Number 4 Clue. Number 1 - repeat Number 1 - Today. And for good measure - The Proms on Radio 3 finished runner up. It's a very good spread of what Radio 4 has on offer.

Among the TV programmes in the top 25 were - Edge of Darkness, Blackadder, Morse, World in Action (Death on The Rock), State of Play, Our Friends in the North, Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Jewel in The Crown etc. So we were in illustrious company.

I grant you the VLV is more interested in high quality broadcasting than many - and I detected a natural empathy for Radio 4 - but even so this was a wonderful moment for Radio 4 and for radio in general. It's a tribute to the programme makers and the talent who created these programmes and a reflection of the lust the Radio 4 audience has for quality - whether in News and Current Affairs, ideas or comedy.

We will celebrate soberly and parsimoniously - but we are much cheered. And more than 25 years after the arrival of breakfast television Today goes from strength to strength. There remains a huge appetite for the programme - the occasional wart and all. Because it delivers impartial, vigorous, broad and - yes - witty journalism that is unmatched at that time of the day. By a crack team.

Mark Damazer is Controller of BBC Radio 4

The Sony Awards

2009-05-13T11:28:52+00:00

The Sonys on Monday - Radio's big awards night of the year - is a largely enjoyable ritual. The evening at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London's Park Lane is long - but there is more goodwill around than in many of these sort of occasions. And it is the only time the industry can see itself in the round - or a semblance of the round.

Thus those assembled in the cavernous ballroom come from the BBC and Commercial Radio, from big stations and small stations and from those who are in music radio and those who focus on speech. In recent years alcohol consumption has fallen and the acceptance speeches have been shorn of most of their baroque ornamentation.

Radio 4 did fine - even if the predominant hue was silver rather than gold. The tally was 3 Gold awards, 10 Silver and 2 Bronzes. In some other years we have won more Golds and fewer Silvers - but it's still a decent haul and down to the skill of the programme-makers - both from within the BBC and the independent radio companies that provide us with many excellent programmes. Here are the details:

Radio 4's winners

The Drama Award.
Gold: Mr Larkin's Awkward Day
Silver: The Color Purple
Bronze: Goldfish Girl

The Interview Award
Gold: Fergal Keane interviews Lana Vandenberghe

The News and Current Affairs Award
Silver: Today

The News Special Award
Silver: Poetry From The Front Line

The News Journalist of the Year
Silver: Mike Thomson

Speech Radio Personality of the Year
Silver: Eddie Mair

The Speech Broadcaster of the Year
Silver: Evan Davis

The Comedy Award
Gold: Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!
Bronze: The Now Show

The Feature Award
Silver: Anatomy Of a Car Crash
Bronze: Leonard and Marianne

The Breaking News Award
Silver: Attacks in Mumbai

The Themed Programming Award
Silver: 1968 - Myth or Reality?

The Multiplatform Radio Award
Silver: World On The Move

Radio 3 - happily - won the Station of the Year Award - for the first time. Here is the list of all the awards made on the night.

Of course every year there are some programmes - whether big programme strands or individual documentaries - you particularly wish had won the top bauble... but restraint is called for. It would not be right to single out in public any single programme.

The Radio 4 winners were all top notch. Count Arthur Strong, winner of the comedy award, is a very strong flavour - one very much to my taste. We know that there is a section of the audience that doesn't get it - but we also know that another section of the audience loves it with feeling. Steve Delaney - the comic genius behind the programme - picked up the award as himself. I had wondered whether he might make his acceptanace speech in character. There will be another series. Catch it.

The Drama award was won by Mr Larkin's Awkward Day - written by Chris Harrald. It provides a delicious insight into Philip Larkin's character - and has a tremendous sense of period. We will repeat it.

And Fergal Keane's interview with Lana Vandenberghe (from the programme strand 'Taking a Stand') - who when working at the Independent Police Complaints Commission in London leaked documents about the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Fergal pressed her hard - but with careful politeness. A terrific piece. Listen to the programme here.

The Sony Radio Academy Awards and the Radio Academy.
The Guardian's Media Monkey went to the awards.
The Telegraph's Anita Singh on the awards.
Steve Delaney interviews Count Arthur Strong in The Guardian in 2004.
Fergal Keane wrote a piece for the BBC News web site about Lana Vandenberghe.