On the theme of what happened behind the scenes, the quote below was posted on the BBC Radio 2 'get talking' forum as part of a discussion about the show. Although mostly replying to our 'hot topic' it gives valuable insight into the show's production & I thought you might like to see it here:

I edited most of the awards show programme and so take responsibility for everything that was edited out. The show ran for two and a quarter hours on the night and I had to cut it down to 87 mins. I had to drop one full piece of music, heavily edit John McCusker's tunes and cut quite a lot of everyone's speech. I did not take out any political references deliberately, was just a practical problem of physically getting the show to time and making it sound reasonably natural. If I remember correctly there were three references to the PEL. I cut out two and left Tom Robinson's comments. There were many other comments during the evening that I regret losing. There is no question of political censorship, it was purely a decision of cutting the speech down to the bone or dropping more music or even one of the awards. However, all the speeches are on our web site where they can be accessed at any time and heard in full, and a number of times during the programme we directed listeners to the web site. John Leonard, Producer.