Congratulations to Londonist's breakfast show presenter of choice Christian O'Connell of XFM. He and his show picked up three awards at the Sony Radio Academy Awards last night: Breakfast Show Of The Year, The Entertainment Award (presented by Shakin’ Stevens - pictured), and The Competition Award (for the Rock School contest run last November).
Londonist actually gets easily bored of XFM's 1600rpm spin cycle-esque rotational play of its daytime playlist (although we love X-Posure between 9 and midnight) so it's the quality of the speech output on The O'C's show that has kept us tuned in for all these years to the Breakfast Show. We suspect our love for the show, apart from the fact that Christian O'Connell's arrival signalled the end of what seemed to be a revolving door to the Breakfast Show presenter's job, is because we're around the same age as Christian and his co-presenter Chris Smith. We find the chatter very much in tune with the 'many crap ideas in your head', as Mrs Londonist once put it. Still, we're happy to have found someone directly appealing to Londonist's own demographic.
Oh, and comments like this one taken from the BBC's report endear us even more. Speaking about the Rock School competition, O'Connell said:
It's the kind of thing that the BBC should be doing, but can't be bothered. We don't have half your budget, but you don't believe in live radio or the music.
O'Connell also presents Radio Five Live's Fighting Talk series (there are podcast downloads available on the site).
Chris Smith, whose lights Londonist recently threatened to knock out for not sending us any Breakfast Show's pink beanie hats, also occasionally updates an enlightening behind-the-scenes blog.
XFM's sister radio station Capital FM is a Big Loser, having picked up no awards at all.
Of the other London stations, Danny Baker of BBC London 94.9 picked up DJ of the Year, despite not actually playing records on his show. Well, we doubt Danny Baker would want mere records getting in the way of his incessant inane chatter. In our more mischevious moments, we like to think the award was given to keep him off our tv screens and to encourage him to stay out of sight on radio. Unfortunately, the BBC reports:
Hours after his Sony win, Danny Baker told listeners he was leaving his breakfast show on BBC London 94.9. The station said he was taking "an extended holiday" but would "definitely" return to the station.
Baker's agent said the DJ wanted to write a film script for TV channel Five.
Hmm, so long as he doesn't insist on taking a screen role.
For a real alternative, as opposed to XFM's mainstream version of alternative, try Resonance FM, as mentioned most recently here (warning: picture of Jamie Theakston appears after the jump).
The awards website has a comprehensive list of all the winners.
