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Awards, Awards, and Yet More AwardsDateline: 13th February, 2005This week we publish the winners of the BAFTA Film Awards, the London Film Critics' Awards and the Evening Standard Film Awards. The Oscars are coming up soon. This time next week we'll have the announcement of the Olivier winners, and we had the TMA (formerly Barclays) Awards in October, the Evening Standard Awards and the Manchester Evening News Awards in December, the Critics' Circle Awards and the Theatre in Wales Awards in January and the What's Onstage Awards last week. I think that's it... Oh no it isn't! There are the BAFTA TV Awards in April. I'm willing to bet I've missed some, though. I mean, I haven't even mentioned the awards for Scottish theatre, or the Tonys, or the Screen Actors' Guild Awards, or the New York Critics' Circle Awards, or numerous others in the States which will almost certainly involve British actors, directors, productions or films. I'm thinking of starting a new set of Awards - the Awards Awards, in which we give awards for the best awards ceremonies, the best awards presenters, the best awards acceptance speech, the best... Well, you get the idea. Now, nobody is more pleased than I am to see a low budget British film like Vera Drake being celebrated or Mike Leigh and Imelda Staunton, two unsung (in the eyes of the general public, at any rate) luminaries of British theatre, getting the recognition they deserve, but I am, I'm afraid, beginning to suffer from AFS - Awards Fatigue Syndrome. Do we really need all these awards? Sticking purely to theatre, there is undoubtedly a place for the Oliviers (London-based) and the TMA Awards (regional), and for awards specific to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but as for the rest I am not at all sure. You may be able to put forward an argument for the Manchester awards, but should we also have awards for Birmingham, Liverpool or even Lesser Sodbury on the Wold? I was once presented with an award for being the best director of a production of The Wizard of Oz in English in Wuppertal in the year 2000. I refused to allow the fact that it was the only production of The Wizard of Oz in English in Wuppertal in the year 2000 to detract from the self-satisfaction I felt on receiving it! Is anyone - apart from those involved, of course - really interested? Has the British public become so celebrity-obsessed that it is fascinated by watching people they'll never see in the flesh accepting awards for shows they'll never go to watch even if they come to a theatre near them? Or am I just sick of typing out endless lists of who won what where and when and for what?
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