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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Business
Julia Day

Mel B heads 'Nafta' award-winners

Mel B, Jim Davidson, Coleen Nolan, Frank Skinner and Davina McCall have all been "honoured" with alternative Baftas today - awards for the worst shows on television in the last year.

In a Virgin Radio listeners' poll, former Spice Girl Mel B won the award for the worst entertainment programme for her ITV talent show, This My Moment, narrowly beating the BBC's National Lottery Jet Set to take the gong.

In the self-styled "Naftas", McCall's ITV show, Sam's Game, scooped the award for worst sitcom, beating Johnny Vaughan's Orrible, Mr Charity and The Only Fools and Horses Christmas Special.

David Baddiel and Frank Skinner won worst comedy programme for Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, triumphing over tough competition from surprise entrant ITV's The Premiership.

The BBC's Joy of Text, a dedicated evening of programming "celebrating the phenomenon of text-messaging", topped the poll to take worst factual entertainment programme.

Other victories came for Crossroads as worst soap, Ulrika Jonsson's gameshow, Dog Eat Dog, and BBC1's mountain rescue drama, Rockface, with Jim Davidson and Coleen Nolan voted TV's worst talents.

A special award, the Nafta fellowship for mediocrity, was awarded to Donna Air, but the chances of any of the stars collecting their spray-painted gold trophy of a boot kicking a TV, are thought to be slim.

The winners were voted for by listeners to Virgin Radio after the station's breakfast DJ, Daryl Denham, came up with the idea to coincide with the announcement of the year's most prestigious TV awards, the Baftas.

Denham said: "We thought it was time to raise the profile of the UK's worst TV programmes. People are bored with the backslapping antics of the television industry."

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