The British Comedy Awards, once one of TV’s most reliable sources of controversy from Julian Clary’s remarks about Norman Lamont to a decade-old voting scandal, have been dropped by Channel 4.
The Jonathan Ross awards ceremony has aired on Channel 4 for the last four years but the broadcaster said on Tuesday that it would be “saying goodbye” to the event to focus on “investing in new comedy series”.
The most recent awards, in December last year, were seen by 1.3 million viewers, half the 2.7 million who watched the 2011 event, the first time it was aired by Channel 4 after it previously appeared on ITV.
The latter years of its run on ITV were dogged by a phone vote scandal after it emerged that the people’s choice award in 2005 was awarded to Ant and Dec when in fact Catherine Tate had polled more viewer votes.
It led media regulator Ofcom to fine the then ITV franchise holder Channel TV, the compliance licensee for the programme, £80,000 for breaches of the broadcasting code in 2004 and 2005. ITV was later fined £5.7m for the “abuse” of premium rate phone lines.
It was one of a string of controversies around the programme, from Julian Clary’s gag in 1993 that he had been backstage “fisting Norman Lamont” to Spike Milligan a year later calling Prince Charles a “little grovelling bastard”.
In 2007, presenter Ross, then still employed by the BBC, did nothing to endear himself to corporation journalists when he said his salary was “worth 1,000 BBC journalists”, and two years ago it was memorably upstaged by guest presenter Johnny Vegas.
The producers of the show, Unique Television, are now understood to be looking for a new broadcaster to host the show.
A Channel 4 spokeswoman said: “After four great years on the channel, we will be saying goodbye to the British Comedy Awards. Our focus moving forward is investing in new comedy series.”
