Top award for television's The Office

Cult BBC2 programme, The Office, was today honoured when it was named Best Comedy at the South Bank Show awards.

The documentary style comedy, created by and starring Ricky Gervais, beat off competition from Chris Morris’s controversial Brass Eye show and the hit stage production The Play What I Wrote.

The programme, which is based around the goings on in a paper merchants in Slough, has won huge plaudits since hitting the screens last year.

The award was presented by comedy legend, Sir Norman Wisdom, at a ceremony at London’s Savoy Hotel.

The annual South Bank Show Awards recognise achievements in all the arts from opera and pop to cinema and TV.

Last Resort, Paul Pavilovsky’s moving love story set against the backdrop of asylum seekers on the South Coast, took the cinema award, ahead of the gangster movie Sexy Beast and comic romp, Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Pioneering singer songwriter Elvis Costello was also on hand to receive an award on behalf of PJ Harvey, who scooped the Pop Music prize ahead of Irish superstars U2.

The prize was awarded by former Spice Girl, Mel B.

There was also success for author Ian McEwan, when his novel Atonement, which had previously missed out on this year’s Booker and Whitbread literary prizes, was named best book.

Comedy screen writer, Richard Curtis, who created characters such as Mr Bean and Blackadder and who penned the smash film Notting Hill, received a special award from the ceremony’s host, Melvyn Bragg.

Here is a complete list of today’s winners:

:: CLASSICAL MUSIC presented by Mitsuko Uchida

Sir Alfred Brendel - 70th Birthday year & Schubert: Piano Sonatas

:: POP MUSIC presented by Mel B

P J Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

:: OPERA presented by Ian Bostridge

Votzek performed by Birmingham Opera Company

:: Visual Art presented by Sam Taylor-Wood

Frank Auerbach - Retrospective at Royal Academy

:: LITERATURE presented by Dame Antoinette Byatt

Atonement by Ian McEwan

:: DANCE presented by Irek Mukhamedov

The Bird Sings With Its Fingers - Mark Baldwin Dance Company

:: CINEMA presented by Michael Gambon

Last Resort

:: TELEVISION DRAMA presented by Michelle Collins

Beckett on Film - CH4

:: THEATRE presented by Dame Joan Plowright

This England - The Histories

:: COMEDY presented by Sir Norman Wisdom

The Office - BBC2

:: OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN THE ARTS presented by Dame Kiri te Kanawa

Bernard Haitink

:: SPECIAL AWARD: 25 SEASONS presented by Melvyn Bragg

Richard Curtis