National Movie Awards = carnage

Before arriving at the National Movie Awards at Wembley Arena I'd already thought it was going to be pretty boring, lots of waiting around, a long ceremony and not much fun.
I couldn't have been more wrong.

The night started with me and my reporter Ed sitting in the press room, a small room tucked away upstairs in the venue with TV scattered everywhere.
We sat with the other journos gorging on wine, sandwiches and crisps watching the ceremony on the screens and chatting about which celebs looked good etc.

Half way through the ceremony we were invited to go down into VIP celebrity green room, where we bumped straight into showbiz legend\ diva Dame Shirley Bassey (who later in the night even invited up into her dressing room).
Which as you can imagine, was pretty flipping awesome.


We sat in the swanky green room eating pizza and drinking champagne with Shirley, Frank Lampard, The Inbetweeners and James McAvoy.
As I chatted to Shirley about generally girlie stuff, (how much we both fancied Frank and James, her dress, Wales)... her PR lent over and said "please call her Dame Shirley, not Shirley."
Whoops, take it Shirls was out the question then?!
I was genuinely surprised how much everyone ran circles around the Dame.
And embarrassingly, within moments, this included me too...I was fetching her bowls of olives, glasses of champagne and even moving the crisps closer.
It was impossible to not pamper her as she purred: "crisps please" which resulted in about four of us all rushing to find the nearest crisp bowl.
In hindsight it was quite ridiculous.


I chatted, very briefly, I mean VERY briefly, to Frank Lampard.
He's hotter than I expected but more nervous too.My colleague Ed asked him about the footballer's super injunction and why they cheated.Frank left the room about 30 seconds later. Whoops.
Also spoke to Lewis Hamilton and his missus Nicole Sherzinger.




We then headed off to Dame Shirley's dressing room, which was full of champagne, caviar, Louis Vuitton luggage and fur coats. She let me try on her blue rabbit fur coat, which was pretty  cool.
DSB started singing, at the top of her voice, her most famous hit Gold Finger.
Amazing, she has such a distinct, powerful voice,
Me and Ed looked at each other in amazement as we too joined in... "Gold finger..he's the man. The man with..." Comedy.
As we kissed Shirley, sorry Dame Shirley, on both cheeks and waved her off in her chauffeur driven car she said: "Life live to the full, be happy."
What a night. Won't forget that for a while.