You shall go to the ball, Cinders

Went to the Scottish BAFTA awards in Glasgow last night, thanks to a kind invitation from Skillset Scotland. Felt a bit like Cinders having blagged her way into the ball at first, but soon relaxed and enjoyed myself. Ran into author Alan Bissett, with whom I did a radio drama lab last year, so we had a good old gossip. Also met comics writer Mark Millar and his lovely wife, saw no end of Scottish TV actors and comedians, and talked with several producers during the evening.

The awards show ran long, as these things always seem to do, but it was great to see another Screen Academy Scotland graduate on a winning team. Chris Grady was chief writer for Blowout, a sketch pilot on Channel 4 that won best Scottish TV comedy. Talked to him afterwards and he was well made up. His breakthrough stemmed from the Gags To Go opportunity run by The Comedy Unit last summer, proof positive that entering competitions works.

Anomaly of the night had to the best film actress award, where there was only one nominee, Sophia Myles for Hallam Foe. Find it hard to believe there wasn't another performance by a woman in a Scottish film in the last year worthy of praise, but I'm no judge. The discomfit of the situation was made even more acute as Myles was the only winner not present to collect their award [she's making a vampire detective TV series in Los Angeles called Moonlight, at least until the scripts run out].

The awards finally finished and everyone got bussed across town to the Hilton for their dinner, followed by dancing to the wee small hours. I went to the dinner and got nattering to plenty more people, but made my excuses at 11am. It's an hour to drive back home and I've got no shortage of work to do today.

But my highlight of the evening was probably talking to Julian Mitchell, who won best TV writer for his BBC4 drama Consenting Adults. Mitchell wrote all the best episodes of Inspector Morse, including my all-time favourite Masonic Mysteries. It was lovely to get a chance to tell him that, and he was friendly and a joy to meet. All in all, a fun night out and highly recommended. Now, back to work.