Comment by Jeremy Skidmore: Travel Weekly right to Savage awards

Sunday, 21 Jan, 2003 0

The recent Travel Weekly awards at the Grosvenor House was a welcome change from previous events.

Several years ago TTG decided to liven up its tedious awards ceremony by hiring a celebrity to do the honours. Some, like Graham Norton, have proved better than others, like Mark Lamaar. But hats off to TTG for trying something different.

During my time as editor of Travel Weekly we were all a bit pompous about our awards event. We considered it to be the best ceremony on the calendar, held it at the prestigious Grosvenor House, and kept it very safe. Presenters like Mary Nightingale were very professional and classy. But they were also dull.

This year Travel Weekly took a gamble by hiring Lily Savage to hand out the gongs.

Lily was disgusting, outrageous and absolutely hilarious. It was exactly what was needed to shake up the format. Lily was so funny that he/she even made the ceremony, which lasted one and a half hours and involved a huge number of winners, bearable.

And the argument that ridiculing people and the awards devalues the event is not true. Instead, people have a laugh at themselves but are still keen to win the vote from travel agents and be able to brag about it in their advertising for another year.

My hosts, P&O Cruises, thought the evening was hilarious and they were also delighted to win an award.

So well done, although I would like to make a point about the music. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were brilliant bands in their heydays, that was quite a long time ago. How about the sound of gangsta rappin’ to greet next year’s winner of the best coach company, short haul, division two, sector seven?

Read previous comments by Jeremy Skidmore:
21-Jan-2003 Comment by Jeremy Skidmore: Travel agent link up the way forward
14-Jan-2003 Comment: ‘Time for agents to take control’
14-Jan-2003 Comment by Jeremy Skidmore: Big boys to blame for pricing attacks
10-Dec-2002 Comment: The Role of Independent Agents
03-Dec-2002 Comment: Anyone got any good news?
26-Nov-2002 Comment: Agent consortia should join, says Jeremy Skidmore
20-Nov-2002 Comment: Winter Bookings, by Jeremy Skidmore
13-Nov-2002 Comment: Timeshare and Resort Conference
05-Nov-2002 Comment: MyTravel
23-Oct-2002 Comment: The ABTA Convention

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