I wonder why the 15 year old me thought that the details of my masturbatory life would be interesting to anyone, to make it worth recording. I clearly imagined that there would be future readers of my diary who would find such shabby details vitally important or worthy of their time. Of course, as it turned out, the observation would be of interest to thousands of strangers, though not for the reasons I thought.
This evening the London papers led with the story that the British Comedy Awards had been fixed so that
Ant and Dec beat Catherine Tate in a phone vote. Of course it is rather embarrassing that a high profile event can be fixed like this, for whatever reason, but some kind of collusion goes on in most of these events as far as I can see. I think the public imagine that these things are decided by a panel of experts who have been scouring all TV, radio and stage shows for the previous year and have then come to a considered decision as to which show or performer was actually the best. Maybe that would be fair, though, of course, any such decision would be subjective and totally dependent on who was on the panel.
But the truth, for many major awards, is different. I sat on
an award panel, last year, which I am not really allowed to discuss at all. But fuck it, I will a bit. It was a prestigious award and one that I had a lot of respect for and I was one of a jury of about eight people who were being asked to decide who the best entertainment personality of the year was. We were given tapes to watch before we convened and I have to say I was very surprised by some of the choices that were on our list, and more importantly the names that weren't. There was a very strange programme from Wales, which was hours long and not very good and we were being asked to consider a singer who did a couple of songs at the end of it. Who wasn't particularly impressive. There were a lot of old guard stalwarts who should probably have been on the list ten years ago, but who were scarcely cutting edge, there were very few newer people and the ones who were on there, were, as far as I was concerned, representative of the worst of modern comedy. And there was Alan Sugar, who I like, but I don't think can be classified as a comedy performer.
The panel convened and commented immediately on some of the weird and boring choices and also on the names missing from the list. It became clear within five minutes that nearly everyone in the room thought there was one person who should have won this award and yet that person was not even nominated. We were told that the people we were choosing between had largely been chosen by the broadcasters who made the shows themselves. So each channel was able to nominate a few shows or personalities that they wanted to be considered for the award, which explained the odd regional show. A few of the nominees were chosen by a larger group of people (though clearly one with quite conservative tastes and no idea of who the newer more exciting acts were), but the fact that many of the names in front of us had been selected by people from the channels that made the shows, for me, made a mockery of the whole thing. Executives are naturally going to try and choose the shows that they wish to promote, rather than the ones that are the best, in order to justify their own positions. "Look, the show I commissioned has been nominated for an award! I am great at my job!" That seems almost as bad to me as actually fixing an award. Similarly executives can fail to nominate shows that perhaps are artistically better or funnier, but which they wish to get rid of. Surely for these awards to have any value or integrity, they must be chosen by an independent source. Or at least not by the people making the shows, whose jobs depend on their success or failure.
I have also heard stories of collusion between broadcasters - as often as not there is a selection of people from different channels on a jury, so it is possible that they can make agreements - "I'll vote for your show in this category, if you vote for mine in this one." I don't know if that is true (and it seemed to me that in the one I was involved with the panel was very fair and honest and genuinely wanted to pick the best person - even if the person we mainly wanted to choose weren't up for it), but it seems likely doesn't it. And whilst faking a phone vote and taking people's money only to ignore their choice is worse, I think many people would be surprised to find out the level to which most awards are "fixed" right from the start. It's all political and no one wants to rock the boat in case that means they don't get nominated for an award the next time.
There's a good chance that I am just bitter, because since "On The Hour" I have never been involved in a show that has been nominated for anything. And maybe I feel that something like TMWRNJ might have not been canceled if the British Comedy Awards had noticed that it was good and had put it up for nomination. But the executives at the BBC didn't want to do any more so they were never going to put it forward. So we were doomed!
I always like to believe that the cream will rise to the top and that good things will make it through this slightly corrupt process. And of course they do, thanks to word of mouth or journalistic support. Peep Show and The Office both managed to weather initial indifference from the channels that they were on to become deservedly successful. But how many good shows have foundered and how many bad ones have prospered due to this minor injustice? I don't think a British Comedy Award necessarily makes a huge amount of difference in the long run, but it might be a contributing factor in the recommissioning of a series or the success of someone's career. We know that at least one of these awards was openly fixed. Are we going to see some honesty about the process by which the others were decided? From all the award committees.
No we're not.
