Helen Mirren made my Baftas marathon worth it
To the Bafta awards. Channel 4 News was nominated for its news coverage.
The show is a love/hate thing. Interminably long and normally an absurd cramp up at the London Palladium, then a bus ride to some Park Lane emporium for dinner. A seven-hour marathon, redeemed last night by not being in a west end theatre.
It was staged at London’s greatest concert hall, the Royal Festival Hall. Fabulous sun-kissed Thames-side evening (too good to be indoors).
Red carpet awash with “stars”. The eternal embarrassment of not having watched enough telly, slinking along in the shadows of people I should know but failed to recognise.
Whooping screams from bystanders as they glimpse stars of soap and screen. Noticing the disappointment on the faces of photographers who don’t want my photo but seem to be forced to take it to fill the time, me knowing it will be used the next time I’m “in the frame” for something. What an odd evening.
Once inside, the hall is so comfortable. News at Ten’s Bill Neely scoops the prize we were after with a fantastic report on the Chinese earthquake, courtesy of an amazing Chinese cameraman who started filming 20 seconds after the shock and kept rolling for the subsequent hour.
I have to go backstage to prepare to come out and give the award for best factual programme. There’s Helen Mirren in the makeshift make-up parlour, curled up elegantly on a sofa, learning a role.
I ask her what it is. Phedre – sumptuous Greek love story coming on at the National. She is one extraordinary star. No airs, just many graces and kindly about being disturbed from her studies.
I go out on stage where a number of household comics have bombed already. The excellent Graham Norton, who hosts, has dismissed one with the phrase “One foot in the grave”. Miaow!
You realise the audience has not the slightest interest in you, and anyway you’d rather be on the river’s edge in the sun or picking an award up! But this is great: the winner of this one in the octogenarian David Attenborough.
The seven-hour odyssey is over. The Audi provided whisks you home with a goody bag (inanimate) in the front seat. Recessions? Reality? Not much of it on show last night. Nobody knows how to award themselves better.