Last night the radio industry got all dressed up and excitable at our equivalent of the Oscars - the Sony Radio Awards. I was late, having given myself an optimistic half-hour to belt home from work to change. There was a lot of swearing and general crossness before I finally scrambled into a cab. "Park lane," said the driver, furrowing his brow. "Is that near Euston?" Eventually, however, I was rushing through the empty foyer, feeling a bit like Cinderella, with frizzy hair. I hurried down the sweeping stairs into the sunken ballroom and a roaring sea of household voices.
Then, in strict defiance of the way these things usually work, two programmes I had worked on actually won something. The Reunion, a Whistledown production, carried off the speech programme gold. And Letters From Guantanamo, which I produced with Whistledown for Radio 4, had apparently won gold in the news feature category. As I followed Gavin Esler, the wonderful presenter, up on to the stage, a fair part of my mind was wondering if my hair was still frizzy.
How incongruous. The programme is based on the letters of Sami al-Hajj, otherwise known as prisoner 345 of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Sami was taken there six years ago. He has not seen his wife, Asma, or his young son, Mohammed, since then. His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith of the charity Reprieve, tells me he is currently on hunger strike.
I am immensely proud of the way our programme gave Sami a voice, and opened up some of the questions around his case. But, gold Sony or not, has it actually made any difference?
