O'Grady shortlisted for top TV award

New teatime chat show host Paul O’Grady has been shortlisted for a prestigious television award.

Richard and Judy, the Channel 4 show which O’Grady went head-to-head with in the sofa wars last year, has not been nominated.

ITV1’s Paul O’Grady Show is up for Best Daytime Programme at next month’s Royal Television Society Awards.

Broadcasters submitted 14 programmes to the daytime category, but only O’Grady, also known as Lily Savage, and Channel 4’s A Place in Spain made it to the nominations stage.

A second series of the Paul O’Grady Show is set to go out in the slot which Des O’Connor and Melanie Sykes are currently occupying later this year.

Other nominations include Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca for Best Actress, for Sex Traffic, the Channel 4 drama about the trafficking of young eastern European girls for prostitution in the west.

Marinca, who made her TV debut in Sex Traffic, is up against Shirley Henderson for Dirty Filthy Love (ITV) and Lia Williams for May 33rd (BBC1).

BBC1 ballroom dancing show Strictly Come Dancing and Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway (ITV) are both up for Best Entertainment, with Derren Brown for Tricks of the Mind (Channel 4).

Ant and Dec, Derren Brown, and Jonathan Ross are also nominated for Best Entertainment Performance.

Coronation Street’s 11-year-old star Sam Aston (Chesney Brown) is up for Best Network Newcomer, with Catherine Tate for The Catherine Tate Show (BBC2) and Thomas Morrison for Blackpool (BBC1).

Coronation Street, EastEnders, and Emmerdale are all up for Best Soap.

Little Britain’s Matt Lucas and David Walliams are in line for for Best Comedy Performance award, against Peter Kay (Max and Paddy) and Tamsin Greig (Green Wing), both on Channel 4.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares has a nod for Best Features and Factual Entertainment against two other Channel 4 shows, Supernanny and Grand Designs Abroad.

Shameless, the Channel 4 drama about the anarchic family life of the Gallaghers, is up for Best Drama Series, with Bodies (BBC3) and Life Begins (ITV).

England Expects actor Steven Mackintosh, Omagh’s Gerard McSorely and Dirty Filthy Love’s Michael Sheen are shortlisted for Best Actor.

Digital channel BBC3’s nominations include Flashmob – The Opera, for Best Arts and Best Digital Channel Programme, Nighty Night for Best Situation Comedy and Comedy Drama, and Little Britain, which began life on the youth channel.

The awards will be presented on March 15 at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel.