Critics’ Choice TV Awards – yesterday evening’s award show brought further glory for detective series Sherlock which took the award for Best Miniseries with Benedict Cumberbatch taking Best Miniseries Actor.
The awards were held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills and the winner of the night’s biggest prize was the psychological thriller Homeland which took the Best TV Drama Series award. The show’s star Claire Danes also picked up the award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Carrie Mathison the bipolar CIA agent looking for a terrorist in the heart of America.
It was thought that it would be another good night for Mad Men which won 3 awards last year but as it turned out the only award it picked up this year was for curvy Christina Hendricks in her role as the office manager Joan Holloway. It is the second consecutive year that she has walked away with the award.
We also had another quite unexpected British winner on the night with Cat Deeley picking up an award for Best Reality Show Host for her work in Fox Network’s So You Think You Can Dance. Cat shared the award with Tom Bergeron who hosts Dancing With The Stars.
One person we did think might take away an award on the night is Damian Lewis, who plays Marine Sgt Nicholas Brody in Homeland but in the end Lewis lost out to Bryan Cranston who stars in the crime drama Breaking Bad. Damian got the chance to meet President Obama in March this year when he was invited to a special state dinner. The President is a huge fan of Homeland and has said that it is his favourite tv show.
Another possible British winner was Lara Pulver who was up for the Best Actress in a Miniseries award for her role as Irene Adler in Sherlock but in the end she too lost out, this time to Julianne Moore who won for her role as the 2008 vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin in the HBO drama Game Change.
The Critics’ Choice Awards are seen as the precursor to next month’s Emmy Awards which are the US television industry’s most prestigious awards.
Royal Ascot Fashion - today saw the opening day of Royal Ascot and after some problems in previous years racegoers this year had to abide by some stringent new fashion guidelines.
Anyone lucky enough to secure an invite to the Royal Enclosure had some fairly tough rules to follow. Women are banned from wearing fascinators and their skirts and dresses have to be of modest length and no shorter than just above the knee. In previous years women have just been advised that miniskirts were unsuitable.
Other fashion no-no’s for the Royal Enclosure are strapless, halterneck and off-the-shoulder dresses as well as those with spaghetti straps or any strap thinner than one inch wide. Just in case people were in any doubt bare midriffs are also banned this year.
Men do not escape from the fashion police if they are heading for Ascot’s Royal Enclosure and must now be seen in black or grey morning dress together with a waistcoat. Ties are of course compulsory and you are not even allowed any leeway by wearing a cravat.To go with their morning dress the men must also wear a black or grey top hat and only black formal shoes are permitted.
In the grandstand area of the course things are less formal although men must still wear a suit and tie and all women must wear a hat or a fascinator.
To make sure that everyone abided by the rules today there were a number of what the course described as dress code assistants but we prefer to call fashion police. They were kitted out with wicker baskets full of lots of ties for the men if they had forgotten and pashminas for the ladies in case they should be showing too much flesh
Amongst today’s celebrity racegoers were TOWIE’s Lydia Bright in a tight-fitting scarlet dress from Hybrid that showed off her slim figure and Danielle Lineker in a stylish black and white dress with black shoes and bag. These two got almost universal praise today for their choice of outfit however another celeb seems to have split opinion on whether her outfit was a hit or a miss. Britains’ Got Talent judgeAmanda Holden wore a floral cream Azagury dress. The designer is a firm favourite with Kelly Brook, Katherine Jenkins, Mylene Klass and Helen Mirren as well as previously being a favourite of Princess Diana. She matched this with a cream Aspinal bag but the part of her outfit that has most divided people is her choice of headgear. She wore a DeDe Valentine hat which has been described by some as stylish although the Huffington Post thought it made her look like Little Bo Peep.
Another outfit that got people talking was the one worn by model and wildlife presenter Anneka Tanaka-Svenska with a huge hat designed by Louis Mariette that seemed to be made of 2 large birdcages, a number of pink roses and lots of white feathers. We are sure that she was glad today wasn’t too windy or she would have ended up somewhere down by the car park!
In case anyone was interested in the horses then we can report that the world’s top rated racehorse, Frankel, won the Queen Anne Stakes. This was no surprise to either the bookies or anyone in the crowd that had seen him race before. Today’s victory took his total number of consecutive wins to 11 and the level of dominance he has shown in earlier meetings and his form in training meant that it was not a big pay-day for you if you backed him as his odds were a staggeringly mean 10 to 1 on.
It appears that the economic woes have not yet reached this part of Berkshire as over the next few days racegoers are expected to consume 170k bottles of champagne, 10k lobsters, 5k oysters and 18k punnets of strawberries. Nice work if you can get it!
