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Teacher blasts Education Secretary Michael Gove at Royal Television Society Awards

Star of 'Educating Yorkshire' offers unflattering dedication as he picks up the award for best documentary series, while Idris Elba and Olivia Colman named best actor and actress

Anthony Barnes
Wednesday 19 March 2014 01:11 GMT
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Channel 4 series Educating Yorkshire landed a top TV award as one of the stars of the show blasted the Education Secretary Michael Gove.

The programme collected the best documentary series prize at the Royal Television Society Awards staged in London.

Michael Steer, a maths teacher who was a regular face on the series set in Dewsbury's Thornhill Community Academy, offered an unflattering dedication as he picked up the award.

He told guests from the TV industry: “On behalf of teachers I'd like to dedicate this award to Michael Gove and I mean dedicate in the Anglo Saxon sense which means insert roughly into the anus of.”

Other winners included Stephen Fry who was named best presenter for his series Stephen Fry: Out There in which he travelled to a number of countries to examine how they treated their gay communities. The broadcaster famously made an attempt on his own life as he made the series as it left him at such a low ebb.

He paraphrased Winston Churchill to tell guests: “I think you can judge a civilisation by the way it treats its minorities.”

Idris Elba took the best actor prize for his performance in BBC1 detective series Luther.

Olivia Colman won the best actress prize for the second year running for her role in Broadchurch with judges calling her “an actor at the top of her game”.

Taking to the stage without her shoes, she said: “I kicked them off under the table and forgot to put them back on.”

PA

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