TV Awards: Educating Yorkshire teacher takes swipe at Gove

The programme collected the best documentary series prize at the Royal Television Society Awards staged in London on Tuesday night.

Michael Steer, a maths teacher who was a regular face on the series set in Dewsbury’s Thornhill Community Academy, offered an unflattering dedication as he picked up the award.

He told guests from the TV industry: “On behalf of teachers I’d like to dedicate this award to Michael Gove and I mean dedicate in the Anglo Saxon sense which means insert roughly into the anus of.”

Channel 4 was the biggest winner of the night sharing in nine awards for which it was the broadcaster.

While ITV’s Coronation Street took the best soap prize.

Other winners included Stephen Fry who was named best presenter for his series Stephen Fry: Out There in which he travelled to a number of countries to examine how they treated their gay communities. The broadcaster famously made an attempt on his own life as he made the series as it left him at such a low ebb.

He paraphrased Winston Churchill to tell guests: “I think you can judge a civilisation by the way it treats its minorities.”

Idris Elba took the best actor prize for his performance in BBC1 detective series Luther.

Olivia Colman won the best actress prize for the second year running for her role in Broadchurch with judges calling her “an actor at the top of her game”.

Taking to the stage without her shoes, she said: “I kicked them off under the table and forgot to put them back on.”

Winners of the RTS Programme Awards

• Actress

Olivia Colman - Broadchurch (ITV)/Run (Channel 4)

• Actor

Idris Elba - Luther (BBC1)

• Arts

Imagine...Vivian Maier: Who Took Nanny’s Pictures (BBC1)

• Children’s Fiction

Dumping Ground (CBBC)

• Children’s Programme

Hard Times - A Newsround Special (CBBC)

• Comedy Performance

Brendan O’Carroll - Mrs Brown’s Boys (BBC1)

• Daytime

Four Rooms (Channel 4)

• Documentary Series

Educating Yorkshire (Channel 4)

• Drama Serial

Broadchurch (ITV)

• Drama Series

Peaky Blinders (BBC2)

• Entertainment

The Last Leg (Channel 4)

• Entertainment Performance

Alan Carr - Alan Carr: Chatty Man (Channel 4)

• History

Richard III: King In The Car Park (Channel 4)

• International

Game Of Thrones (Sky Atlantic)

• Live Event

The Ashes - 2013 (Sky Sports)

• Popular, Factual and Features

Gogglebox (Channel 4)

• Presenter

Stephen Fry - Stephen Fry: Out There (BBC2)

• Science and Natural History

Africa (BBC1)

• Scripted Comedy

PLEBS (ITV2)

• Single Documentary

The Murder Trial (Channel 4)

• Single Drama

The Challenger (BBC2)

• Soap and Continuing Drama

Coronation Street (ITV)

• Sports Presenter, Commentator or Pundit

Gary Neville - Sky Sports (Sky Sports)

• Sports Programme

World Athletics - Mo Farah’s Double Gold Win (BBC1)

• Comedy Writer

James Corden, Mathew Baynton and Tom Basden - The Wrong Mans (BBC2)

• Drama Writer

Marlon Smith and Daniel Fajemisin-Duncan - Run (Channel 4)

• Judges’ Award

Janice Hadlow

• Lifetime Achievement

David Suchet