Former Blind Date presenter Cilla Black was among the winners at today's Women in Film and Television Awards, with a prize celebrating her 41-year career in entertainment.
Black, who sensationally announced she was quitting Blind Date live on air in January last year, collected the Working Title Films lifetime achievement award at the WFT function at the Hilton hotel in London.
The veteran entertainer will be back on TV later this month, presenting a two-hour Christmas special for multichannel service Living TV.
Judy Finnigan, like Black another former ITV star who left the network abruptly when she and her husband, Richard Madeley, defected to Channel 4, won the ITV television award. Caroline Aherne, who wrote and starred in the Royle Family, won the Five award for creative originality.
Sophie Turner Laing, the deputy managing director of Sky Networks who was instrumental in snatching back the Oscars from the BBC and acquiring the rights to Nip/Tuck and the third series of 24, won the Olswang business award.
Drama producer Hilary Bevan Jones, who produced the memorable political drama State of Play for Tightrope Pictures and previously worked on Red Dwarf and Cracker, won the Columbia Tri Star international television contribution to the medium award.
The BBC news & factual award went to Glenwyn Benson, controller of factual and learning at the BBC, who counts the Robert Winston science documentary The Human body among her successes.
Wendy Brazington picked up the AFM lighting craft award, for her work as a casting director on films including Wonderland, Bright Young Things and the television series Sex Traffic.
The Film Finances Inc project management award went to Mairi Bett, producer at Skyline Films, whose credits include Imogen's Face and Ali G in Da House.
Shaheen Baig, the casting agent for the forthcoming Harry Potter film, Billy Elliot, Tomorrow Never Dies and Love Actually, won the Talkback Thames new talent award. Writer Andrea Gibb won the UKFilm Council Script Award.
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