I’ve just come back from the London Press Club lunch, where I was delighted to pick up the “Consumer Journalist of the Year” award.
Not coming from a print journalism background I wasn’t aware of quite how big a do this was and when I got there realised most of the National papers editors and many high profile top hacks were there. On my table alone were the Editor and Dep Ed of the Times plus Robert Peston (who deservedly won Biz Journalist of the year).
Not my finest hour.
Now of course I’m very chuffed to have got such a prestigious trophy, but that aside, it honestly wasn’t the best day.
When I first heard it was on a Tuesday, I said I couldn’t go. Firstly, it’s my GMTV morning, then working on the weekly email for the rest of the day until late in the evening. There’s never a moments break. I was, however, persuaded that it would be “stoopid” not to attend.
Yet when I woke up this morning for my 6.40 transport to GMTV, I felt very sick, and I’ve been seriously nauseous all day. So much so that when I left filming at GMTV at 12:30 to go to the awards, I deliberately didn’t take my make-up off; I’m so green otherwise I think it’d scare people.
Toilet Break at a bad time.
Lunch was nice, I sat next to a lovely lady from British Gas who runs British Gas’s regional PR department (they were the award sponsors) in Cardiff and is a site user; she thankfully kept my mind off my green gills.
Then the awards were about to start so we checked the order. As it seemed mine was the third one, I nipped out to the loo. Sauntering back I saw my name on the screen, realised it’d been the first award, and heard them announcing that I’d won. I ran in, in a bit a fuddle, walked up said thank you.
Then I ending up sitting back down in the wrong chair (one belonging to Sir Christopher Meyer who was presenting the awards) and embarrassingly then had to get up again and walk back to the right one.
No chance to thank the News of the World.
Worse still, these things are quite political and I had wanted to thank the News of the World, for being different and giving a money columnist a place up the front of the newspaper (most money columnists are kept in the money ghetto). In these times they do try and grasp the fact that practical news is a real help to people.
Yet when I said “do I say something” as I got the award they said no. Then I found out that while I was out they’d said “please keep speeches short or do none at all”, and virtually everyone else thanked the organisations they worked for. So I hope they don’t feel snubbed! Let me say thank you here… thank you.
