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BBC FiveLive triumphs with five gold Sony awards

By Paul McNally

• Sony Awards: The full list of winners

BBC Radio FiveLive was the big winner at last night’s Sony Radio Academy Awards in London, walking away with five gold prizes.

The station, under the new leadership of controller Adrian Van Klaveren, was praised by judges for its multiplatform coverage of the Wimbledon tennis championships and its live daily breakfast show from the Beijing Olympics last summer.

Nicky Campbell and Shelagh Fogarty picked up the gold award for best breakfast show, and Gavin Lee was named news journalist of the year.

A fifth award for the station went to Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode, who took the speech award.

BBC Radio 4 left with three golds, including interview of the year for Fergal Keane’s talk with Lana Vandenberghe, the Independent Police Complaints Commission officer who leaked documents about the handling of the Jean Charles de Menezes case.

But the station’s flagship Today programme was beaten into second place in the news award by the The World Today on the World Service, its only gold win of the night.

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The news special award went to a BBC Radio Scotland investigation looking at over-60s who cared for friends and family full-time on an unpaid basis.

Another BBC local station, BBC Manchester, won the breaking news award for its coverage of the Rangers football riots.

The judges said it had a “sympathetic but unsentimental style” and was “a great piece of journalism”.

LBC 97.3 breakfast presenter Nick Ferrari was named speech broadcaster of the year and was praised for his coverage of the London mayoral and US presidential elections.

The former red-top tabloid newspaper reporter beat new BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Evan Davis, who was awarded silver.

Ferrari was described by judges as “a truly compelling broadcaster who brings just enough of his personality to the job while remaining authoritative all the time”.

Guardian.co.uk narrowly missed out on a gold award in the internet programme category for its Media Talk podcast, which was awarded silver.

• Sony Awards: The full list of winners

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