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Press Releases Great 40th birthday present for Radio Leicester at the Frank Gillard Awards 2007

Category: Radio; Radio Leicester
Date: 24.11.2007
Printable version

Â鶹Éç Director-General Mark Thompson honoured the winners of the Frank Gillard Awards 2007 at an awards ceremony in the impressive surroundings of Birmingham Town Hall.

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The Gillard Awards were the centrepiece of a celebration of 40 years of Â鶹Éç Local Radio attended, on Saturday 24 November, by listeners, staff and freelances, past and present, from all the Â鶹Éç's 40 stations.

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The awards were presented by well-known alumni of Â鶹Éç Local Radio, including Jane Garvey, Simon Mayo, Jon Sopel, Kate Adie, Sophie Raworth, Michael Buerk, Mary Rhodes, Sonia Deol, Garry Richardson and by the Chairman of the Â鶹Éç Trust, Sir Michael Lyons.

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Â鶹Éç Radio Leicester celebrated its 40 years on air (the anniversary was 8 November) by winning two Gillards. Ben Jackson took Gold for the Breakfast Programme category and Herdle White, whose black music programmes and reporting have been a constant on the station for 39 years, won one of the six Outstanding Contribution to Â鶹Éç Local Radio awards.

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The coveted Station of the Year award for 2007 went to Â鶹Éç Radio Leeds while Ronnie Barbour of Â鶹Éç Three Counties Radio won Gold in the most strongly contested category – Programme Presenter – coming first out of 28 entries.

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It was a good year for the bigger metropolitan stations as Â鶹Éç London 94.9's coverage of the London marathon gained the Outside Broadcast Gillard, Â鶹Éç Radio Manchester came tops in the Station Sound category, and Â鶹Éç Radio Merseyside's prison phone-in took the Interactivity Award for Roger Phillips.

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Amongst the smaller stations, Â鶹Éç Hereford and Worcester has been making a habit of winning Gillards and this year was no exception with the station winning the Original Journalism category for its coverage of the plight of migrant workers.

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The 40 years of Â鶹Éç Local Radio were marked by six Outstanding Contribution Awards presented by Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the Â鶹Éç, to:

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• Radio Leicester's Herdle White.
  
  
• Alison Hartley, a founder member of the Â鶹Éç Essex team whose battle with a brain tumour has not stopped her contributing to the station.
  
  
• John Walch, a much appreciated Â鶹Éç Radio Sheffield engineer who has been with the station since 1973 and is now the second longest-serving member of Â鶹Éç staff.
  
  
• Ray French, the doyen of Rugby League commentators for Radio Merseyside and Â鶹Éç Sport.
  
  
• John Jefferson, the former manager of Â鶹Éç Radio York and Leeds whose career began on Â鶹Éç Radio Durham as a reporter and continues to this day with Â鶹Éç Local Radio as a consultant and trainer.
  
  
• Owen Bentley, organiser of the Gillard Awards, who started his career as a producer at Â鶹Éç Radio Stoke-on-Trent in 1967 – after a few weeks at Radio Sheffield while Stoke's opening was delayed by foot-and-mouth – and who has since been manager at Radio Leicester, and Head of Local and Network Radio in the Midlands.

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JW

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