I've spent the last almost thirty years presenting awards, by which I mean being the Voice for awards events of all descriptions. It's called 'Voice Of God' which you must admit is a pretty cool job title...
There's an awards event every night of the week and for anything you could imagine, from my semi-detached viewpoint of siitting in the shadows at the back of the room most are occasions for a company-wide or industry-wide get together and that's fine.
I have a fairly jaundiced view of life in general, no surprise then that the actual award winners seem to me to usually be the big hitters who have time and people (and budget) to put in a good nomination - and of course there are cynical awards processes where it's a business proposition like any other.
But hey, it gives me a living and the actual ceremonies are usually fun to do - hard work but using such skillls as I have to good effect.
But then...about five years ago I made a radio programme that, for the first time in a forty year career, I thought was worthy of more recognition than merely my own satisfaction. So I entered it for an award.
And it's amazing how much it matters when it's your name on the nomination.
It came second (to one of the aforementioned big hitters), but they called that a 'silver award' so to this day I shamelessly use 'award winning' on my email signature.
Maybe that's stretching it slightly, but I think I got the best deal in getting 'silver' as I didn't have to go up on stage and have my photo taken which is a very uncomfortable thing for someone who doesn't do in-vision...
A comment from someone in the awards business...
I've spent the last almost thirty years presenting awards, by which I mean being the Voice for awards events of all descriptions. It's called 'Voice Of God' which you must admit is a pretty cool job title...
There's an awards event every night of the week and for anything you could imagine, from my semi-detached viewpoint of siitting in the shadows at the back of the room most are occasions for a company-wide or industry-wide get together and that's fine.
I have a fairly jaundiced view of life in general, no surprise then that the actual award winners seem to me to usually be the big hitters who have time and people (and budget) to put in a good nomination - and of course there are cynical awards processes where it's a business proposition like any other.
But hey, it gives me a living and the actual ceremonies are usually fun to do - hard work but using such skillls as I have to good effect.
But then...about five years ago I made a radio programme that, for the first time in a forty year career, I thought was worthy of more recognition than merely my own satisfaction. So I entered it for an award.
And it's amazing how much it matters when it's your name on the nomination.
It came second (to one of the aforementioned big hitters), but they called that a 'silver award' so to this day I shamelessly use 'award winning' on my email signature.
Maybe that's stretching it slightly, but I think I got the best deal in getting 'silver' as I didn't have to go up on stage and have my photo taken which is a very uncomfortable thing for someone who doesn't do in-vision...