Last night was Our Proudest Night, according to today's Daily Mirror. You can find out yourself, if you can be bothered, by watching ITV1 tonight.
The Mirror's Pride of Britain Awards is now in its tenth year and to mark the occasion the Mirror boasts that it attracts the ‘top celebrities other award shows can only dream of'. And that's the point.
No-one can dispute that rewarding people who have done brave and noble deeds - such as the Royal Marine who threw himself on a grenade to save his colleagues or the child with a muscle-wasting disease who raises money for charity despite her illness, but isn't slightly cynical that the ‘stars' (Paul O'Grady, Emma Bunton, Cat Deeeley who ‘flew in from the LA) were the ones pictured in their best rags pouting on the front page of today's paper and not the heroes themselves?
We are informed in another headline that ‘Lineker was moved to tears' while Dannii Minogue was apparently seen to ‘dab her eyes'. Such a public display of grief is mawkish and is seen to exploit the misery, from which heroism inevitably stems, of others.
And as for Mirror executive editor Peter Wallis getting a special award from the PM for founding the awards in the first place - pass the sick bag.
