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When Simon Amstell was named Best Comedy Entertainment Personality, for Never Mind The Buzzcocks, he asked if the awards show was "going out tonight". Ross took another shot at ITV, responding: "Of course it's not going out. ITV is run by fools and thieves."

Ross also assured the audience that the show’s votes were being researched with the same forensic attention as a "Portuguese police investigation" and that organisers of this year's awards were "more nervous than the teddies at a Sudanese branch of Hamleys".

TV Presenter Fern Britton also joked about the recent Sudan arrest of British School Teacher Gillian Gibbons, calling a giant bear which came on stage "Mohammed".

In between contentious jokes, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here winner Christopher Biggins and singer Lily Allen presented awards.

Hot Fuzz actor Simon Pegg took the Writers' Guild Ronnie Barker Award, The Simpsons Movie beat Borat to Best Comedy Film, while Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm won Best International Comedy Show.

As well as winning personally, Amstel’s show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, took Best Comedy Entertainment Programme.

Al Murray's Happy Hour on ITV1 beat The Graham Norton Show to Best New Comedy Entertainment Programme and Alan Carr won Best Live Stand Up.

In the final tally, BBC 3 took three awards out of the corporation’s total of six, Channel 4 received three, including an award for More 4, while the humiliated ITV managed one.

But it was, perhaps, best actress Smith who expressed the most delight at her win. After receiving her gong, she professed her love for acting: “I keep retiring but I miss it too much. I'm so lucky that I can do something stimulating that I can carry on doing in my old age."

The thespian struggled to get a break before filmmaker Mike Leigh, looking for a middle-aged woman capable of improvisation for his debut feature Bleak Moments, cast her in 1971.

Smith was left devastated when her character Letitia Cropley, in The Vicar of Dibley, was killed off, but is now much-loved for her role in The Royle Family.

The Winners

Editor's choice

• Alicia Keys lets rip
• Streep and Baldwin get complicated
• Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes