Greg and Dotty win big at ‘radio Oscars’

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Greg James has won the Radio Academy award for best new show – after 18 months of entertaining listeners on BBC Radio 1’s Breakfast show.

He lost out on the award for best music breakfast show to his BBC Radio 1Xtra counterpart, Dotty.

James, 34, who hosted the ARIAS awards in London, congratulated her on Twitter, calling her the “absolute best”.

The pair co-presented BBC One’s music show Sounds Like Friday Night.

Around 4.81m listeners tuned in to James’ Breakfast Show in the last three months of 2019, according to the latest figures.

The programme moved from five to four days a week when he took over from fellow Radio 1 presenter Nick Grimshaw in August 2018.

Dotty, 31 – a former rapper also known as Amplify Dot or A. Dot, but whose real name is Ashley Charles – has presented 1Xtra’s Breakfast Show since 2016.

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BBC Radio 2 was named station of the year, while BBC Radio 5 Live’s Emma Barnett received the award for best speech presenter.

Barnett thanked her listeners on Twitter, adding that she was “thrilled”.

Toby Foster, who presents BBC Radio Sheffield’s Breakfast, picked up the award for best speech breakfast show.

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The award for “moment of the year” was given to Iain Lee of Talk Radio, who helped rescue a man who called his show claiming to have taken a drug overdose in December 2018.

In his acceptance speech, Lee urged people to “be kinder”.

“I’ve been suicidal. I’ve plotted to kill myself a couple of times and I didn’t do it – partly because of the Samaritans, partly because of my mates,” he said.

Lee, who appeared on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity in 2017, went on to criticise a tendency to “create fear and division” in radio.

“We don’t need to do that,” he said. “We have a bigger responsibility to help people.”

BBC programmes and presenters won 17 out of 23 awards.

Other non-BBC winners included Bauer Media’s local station Forth 1 and podcast Passenger List.