Awards ceremonies. Wow.

On Sunday night I presented the award for best factual children's entertainment show at the children's BAFTAs at the Park Lane Hilton. As a complete outsider to these kind of events it was a fantastic evening, meeting some incredible people and having a wonderful time!

Saskia and I were picked up in a very smart new Audi A8 (Top of the range executive car), which was then at our beck and call all night (one of the many perks of being a presenter!). Martin, our excellent driver dropped us off on the Red Carpet where we then had to withstand a withering assault of camera flashes from all the photographers waiting there. After a champagne reception we were then shown to our table, where I was sitting next to Jake Humphreys - the BBC's F1 Reporter and former CBBC Star. We also had some of the staff from EA games who were sponsoring the event, and a few gaming journalists as well.

As I was presenting the third award, I was whisked behind the scenes before the show started, where there were loads of people with radios running around all over the place. The show itself being hosted by children's presenters Dick and Dom, and so I had a brief chat with them and some of the other presenters (who were all looking a little nervous!) before it all started. All of Dick and Dom's dialogue was scripted and on autocue, but the script for us presenters was pretty minimal, and so when it was my turn, I did a little adlib before announcing the nominees, which went very well, and the crew behing the scenes were very impressed with!

Once I'd announced the winner (Serious Ocean), and he'd come up to receive his BAFTA (which weighs a ton!) and done his little acceptance speech, I then had to lead him offstage. This nearly went wrong as I started ushering him towards the wrong exit, but luckily managed to recover it without too many people noticing. Trust an 'explorer' to get lost on a stage!

Once backstage we both did some interviews and had more photos taken before sneaking back into the audience. Unlike the Oscars, we hadn't had our seats filled by anonymous fillers, but as my table was right at the front of the stage, it did seem like a bit of an assault course to get back to my seat safely!

There were some great people there - Jason Issacs was sitting on the table next to us with Bernard Cribbins and Catherine Tate. Richard Hammond won best presenter, and other awards presenters included Michelle Ryan, Camilla Dallarup, Harry Potter and Twilight actors, England Rugby players, comedians to name but a few.

The awards were followed by a delicious supper and then a cracking disco, where everyone, famous or else threw decorum to the wind and danced their socks off! I think that it was close to 3am when Audi dropped us home, having had the most incredible evening.

Video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQoexv7tROk

(I appear at about 13.50)