Honours for Jo Brand and Mark Steel

Jo Brand and Mark Steel have been honoured in this year’s Writers’ Guild of Great Britain awards.

Brand’s NHS comedy Getting On and the Radio 4 stand-up show Mark Steel's In Town both scooped accolades in Sunday’s ceremony.

Given the bleak tone of Getting On, there’s an irony in the fact that Brand and her co-writers Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine won the category of best television comedy and light entertainment.

They triumphed over much-garlanded fellow nominees The Thick Of It and Peep Show.

Meanwhile Steel won the same category for radio, ahead of Tom Basden’s Party and John Finnemore’s Cabin Pressure.

Chris Morris lost out in the best original screenplay category, where he was nominated alongside Simon Blackwell and Peep Show writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain for Four Lions. That category went to Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn for their script for Kick-Ass.

The guild awards, the only accolades in which writers are honoured by their peers, have been handed out since 1961.

Published: 22 Nov 2010