TV presenter Johnny Vaughan was on true cheeky chappie form as he helped make the 2005 Travel Weekly Globe Awards go with a bang in January.
“We’re in for a long-haul awards ceremony,” he joked, noting the 38 categories – more than the Oscars and the Baftas put together. “One for every satisfied customer,” he quipped.
Making a beeline for Travel Weekly managing director Trevor Harding, Vaughan claimed he’d been told none of the awards were set in stone and that now was the time for any woman after a Globe to make “lewd sexual advances” on the publication’s stalwart.
And he ridiculed a Travel Weekly reader offer to win one of 10 toothbrushes: “You work in travel, surely it could have been a holiday?”
The audience cheered as he hit out at TV’s Holidays from Hell series. “What do you expect for £99 for a family of five? Richard Branson serving you cocktails in Necker?”
The jokes took a risqué turn, with a dig at airline check-in staff asking travellers if they packed their bags themselves. “What do they expect you to say… no, my butler did… or no, a rather kind man from the Middle East packed it for me? Even terrorists pack their bags themselves.”
In typical Vaughan style, he complimented Travel Weekly promotions manager Penny Akam on her “beautiful globes” and when announcing that the runner-up for the Best European Hotel Group was Hilton, he added: “Well it can’t be Paris, I’ve seen the video.”
When he read out SuperClubs as a nominee for the Best Caribbean Hotel Group he quipped: “Is that the swinger place with all the naked old people in Jamaica – nipples like dustbin lids – playing tennis?”
He said the Best UK Charter category comprised “the key air rage ones”; and when he came to the Best English Channel Short Sea Crossing Operator award he joked: “How specific are these? You’ll have best baggage handler and tidiest computer next.”
As the night went on he kept the attention of those nearer the front in what he named “business” and those at the back in “economy”. Shouting at guests sitting in the balcony he said: “You alright in economy? You can’t have won anything, they don’t stick a winner on the balcony. Bet you haven’t got much leg room either.”
