Last night’s RTS Awards saw the Judge’s Award going to James Corden and Ruth Jones for Gavin & Stacey. An Outstanding Achievement Award was given to Claudie Winklemen.
Here are the speeches that accompanied the presentation of each of these awards.
Judges’ Award
WINNER – James Corden and Ruth Jones
Presented by screenwriter, producer and director Richard Curtis
This is the best job in the world. It is real honour to present the Judges Award for “an outstanding contribution to British television with a particular focus on the impact made during the year”. And to present it – for their extraordinary work on Gavin & Stacey this year – to Ruth Jones & James Corden.
Gavin & Stacey is one of the great British sitcoms, and it reached its epic climax on Christmas Day last year. The received wisdom is that when sitcoms stray from their normal, gorgeous half hour length, they can get very woolly indeed – often featuring a holiday to Ibiza – but this Christmas Special kept & ratcheted up everything that has been wonderful about the show that the public have loved since 2007 – ever funnier, deeper, more intense
Ruth & James – what a thing you have made. Always so many funny lines – big chunky comedy set-pieces – and such an epic range of characters, all funny & true and utterly memorable – and this Christmas you completed everyone’s long, satisfying emotional story curve – even Chinese Alan got his moment. It’s one of the best acted & cast shows I’ve ever seen – and two of the most brilliant performances were yours. But you also wrote the whole damn thing – and it feels like the work of really funny friends. James from London, Ruth from Wales – you combined those two cultures so perfectly, so adversarially, so comically. I think you love each other – and make each other laugh – and what has been on screen is a real reflection of the perfect combination of you.
I like comedies with romance at their hearts – and Gavin and Stacey is not only a great British sitcom – it is the greatest British romantic comedy of all time. And it’s an education in acceptance, kindness, loyalty, and the importance of Indian takeaways.
It’s also lasted 17 years – how did you do that, stay friends, stay funny and end up with such a blissful bang?
The thing I most want to say is this – in the competitive world we live in, a lot of us sometimes forget to celebrate our basic job – which is to make people interested or exhilarated or just plain happy. TV is such an amazing filler of our time. Even the least watched TV programmes probably entertain more people than have ever watched the plays of Harold Pinter. We’re a mass media – and most of you all here tonight do a massively good job. In obsessing about viewing figures and competitive platforms and awards – although I love awards, obviously – we forget there are no real winners or losers – there’s just creative people giving people things to laugh at, be moved by, be educated by, be comforted by – morning, afternoon and night. So when the Gavin & Stacey finale went out – millions of us looked forward to it, and watched it – and by very simple maths – you and your team gave people in the UK 27 and three-quarter million happy hours. That’s a huge thing – that’s so much happiness – so many merry Christmas days hyper-charged and so many ghastly Christmas Day fixed right at the end.
Outstanding Achievement Award
WINNER – Claudia Winkleman
The Outstanding Achievement Award is presented to someone who has captured our hearts and has done so with an effortless warmth, wit, and, let’s be honest, a level of charm that makes the rest of us feel like we’ve accidentally shown up to a black-tie event in our gardening pyjamas. I’m talking about Claudia Winkleman.
We all know Claudia, or think we know her. She’s the host of The Traitors – a show that mixes mystery, deception, and betrayal with the kind of emotional depth that has you questioning your entire social circle. Then, of course, there’s Strictly Come Dancing, where she’s been a dazzling fixture for over 15 years, twice as long as Morecambe and Wise worked at the BBC, bringing joy to millions on Saturday nights. If Strictly were a movie, she would be the heartwarming character that everyone roots for – not the one who trips over the dance floor, but the one who makes you believe that, yes, even I could pull off a perfect foxtrot with just the right amount of determination and maybe a bit of help from the wardrobe department.
But Claudia’s journey didn’t start there. If you trace back through the years, you’ll find that Claudia has been a part of British television for decades. She didn’t just land on our screens like some sort of magical TV fairy. She worked her way up, quietly crafting a career that is as varied as it is impressive. She’s appeared on everything from This Morning to Talking Telephone Numbers to Liquid News and my favourite, God’s Gift. She’s hosted Sport Relief, Comic Relief, even The Great British Sewing Bee. She’s covered the Oscars, been the Nation’s film critic when she slipped effortlessly into Barry Norman and Jonathan Ross’s shoes. Over the last 30 years we’ve all come to rely on her unique voice and perspective. Which is extraordinary considering she is still only 27 years old.
Through it all, there’s been a consistency to Claudia’s presence. She doesn’t just “do” television. She brings something to it. It’s not only her effortless charm, or her wit, or her enviable ability to make every moment seem like it’s full of possibility – though, frankly, those are all hard to ignore. It’s the way she connects with people, the way she seems to understand that the best TV isn’t about being the loudest or the flashiest – it’s about being real. She makes the audience feel like they’re part of the conversation, like we’ve all just been invited into her living room, and we couldn’t be happier about it. And she makes the participants in shows like Strictly and Traitors feel safe – her off camera care and attention for cast and crew equally as important as her work on screen.
And then, of course, there’s that fringe. It’s the most famous fringe on television, a brilliant metaphor for the way Claudia herself exists in the world: effortlessly stylish, undeniably iconic, but always with just enough mystery to keep you intrigued.
But more than anything, Claudia’s charm lies in her ability to take the work seriously without ever taking herself too seriously. She’s willing to laugh at herself, to make light of her own mistakes, hide her deep intelligence, but without diminishing the quality of what she does. She has that rare ability to make us laugh and think, to entertain and move us, all at the same time.
Pippa Considine
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