There are, as we all know, a lot of TV awards ceremonies these days. From the posh – the Baftas – to the common – the Soap Awards – telly prize-givings are so frequent that TV writers like myself barely have time to sponge the vol-au-vent stains from our tuxedos before we’re off out of the door again, to spend the night sitting on little gold chairs and twisting our heads round so we can see which personality we despise the most has won the award that our show was nominated for. I’m joking, of course; television is all one big happy family.

Except, of course, it isn’t, because there’s one award ceremony in which the normal rules of grinning and sycophancy are suspended. At every other do, TV people are nice to one another. We express delight when our well-crafted documentaries lose out to shows called things like My Second Wife’s Hairy Eyes. We slap people on the back whom we’d rather push into a hedge. And we sit with our enemies in a manner that would have made the signees of the Soviet-Nazi nonaggression pact throw up their hands and cry hypocrite.

The one ceremony where the rules of deceit are suspended is the British Comedy Awards. Probably because the whole event is riddled with comedians, whose life is devoted to sarcasm, satire and denigration, the comedy awards are not so much a celebration of British comedy as a bile-stuffed hate fest. It’s hard to think of an event where manners are so quickly left at the door; even the Murderer of the Year Awards need to cling to some shred of politeness just to avoid a bloodbath, but in comedy, the knives are out and flying.

Perhaps it’s the tension of the circuit. Comics, I know from experience, are not like actors or musicians, who are, oddly enough, by and large supportive of one another. But stand-ups spend their lives sharing dressing-rooms with their rivals, fighting to get rebooked in hellholes up and down the land, and are so embittered by their horrific working lives that even the most successful can be spectacularly bitter. Put them in a room with their rivals, fill them up with booze (and whatever stimulants they may have brought along with them), and then give awards to those rivals, and chaos will ensue. Nobody heckles at the National Television Awards. Nobody shouts “W***er!” at the Baftas. But the lowest, most innocuous line producer can get onstage at the Comedy Awards and instantly they’ll be buried by abuse and vitriol.

And that, as they say, is just the audience. On stage the thing is even worse. From Julian Clary’s comments about the former Chancellor Norman Lamont to Ricky Gervais’s remarks about seemingly everyone on earth, the stage of the Comedy Awards is a den of snakes. And it goes on. Those criticised by Ricky Gervais have a go back. Spike Milligan calls the Prince of Wales a grovelling bastard. Even Armando Iannucci – possibly the most gracious television personality since Johnny Morris – has been forced into onstage badinage with some pillock from another show.

Jonathan Ross always used to fuel the flames with a splendidly unpleasant monologue in which he singled out everything mockable about his audience. Part US-style celebrity roast and part territorial marking widdle, Ross’s introduction and links have, until now, been the splenetic glue that bound this event together.

Not that Jonathan Ross is going to be here this time round. Disappointingly stepping down, Ross has passed on the poisoned chalice in at least two senses of the verb, although his TV chat show has been nominated, as has Russell Brand for his stand-up act. In a moment of gorgeous irony, Ross will be replaced by Angus Deayton, a man who himself was briefly out of work a few years ago, but under very different circumstances.

Deayton is a good choice, partly for his hosting style but also because he is not a stand-up comedian (rumour has it that some stand-ups also were offered the gig, but they were reluctant to kick a man who was already pretty much down). Ross’s excellent writers are also absent from the show this year, which means that we could be expecting – and the organisers are certainly hoping for – a deeply anodyne event, where people in tuxedos applaud people they hate.

Which would be a pity. Like continental festivals where staid burghers get stocious and grope each other for days, the Comedy Awards is the one time when television takes off those Bafta masks and tells the truth about itself. It may not be pleasant but I’d rather that than the fascist-rally nature of those ceremonies where people from reality shows read prepared impromptu remarks and dis their paid rivals, like WWF wrestlers. I don’t care if wrestling is fixed, but I do care if comedy is. It’s supposed to be offensive and messy and rude.

These days the organisers of the comedy awards put safeguards in place – they limit the booze, they keep the event short and snappy, and they have paved over the cocaine lake out the back (joke). But one thing nobody can control is a roomful of vexed comedians. And for that reason at least, tonight might still be interesting.

British Comedy Awards, tonight, ITV1, 9.15pm; David Quantick is among other things a script associate on Harry Hill’s TV Burp

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