In the spotlight

THE movie awards season is put on hold to spend two-anda- half hours finding out who’s won The National Television Awards (NTA) 2012.

There are 14 categories so it’s going to be a long night and viewers at home don’t even have the after-show party to look forward to.

These awards are special, the organisers keep telling us, because they are voted for by the public.

The search for the favourite talent show is hotter than ever as The X Factor, which had a bad year without Simon and Cheryl, and Strictly Come Dancing go head to head again. In the ratings, Strictly had the edge and will the public put an X against the BBC show in the NTA vote too?

Cowell has another chance as his other show Britain’s Got Talent is another contender in the category. Dancing On Ice completes the nominees.

One of the most successful drama launches for a decade, ITV1’s period drama Downton Abbey, is up for best drama for the first time. But it needs to beat last year’s surprise winner Waterloo Road and past winner Doctor Who, although I’m rather partial to Merlin, the other series in the category.

There are two doctors in the house for the best male drama performance with Matt Smith’s time travelling Doctor Who up against Martin Clunes’ squeamish surgeon Doc Martin. John Barrowman, Captain Jack in Torchwood, and David Threlfall, for Shameless, are the other contenders.

Doctor Who travelling companion Karen Gillan faces off against Torchwood’s Eve Myles for female drama performance.

Jaye Jacobs of Waterloo Road and Suranne Jones of Scott and Bailey also feature in the category.

Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton, Alan Carr and those Loose Women fight to make themselves heard as the best talk show. CHERYL COLE may have had that rather well-documented marriage break-up and flopped on the US X Factor, but for some reason, there’s a large group of women who simply want to be her. Three of them are featured in Bigger Than Cheryl.

This is the show in which regular women compete to win a lookalike contract to impersonate their favourite stars.

This week, Ms Cole is put in the spotlight, as the hopefuls overhaul their lives, embarking on strict exercise regimes and diets.

IF those who made Jodie Marsh’s young years a misery could see her now, they’d probably think twice about tormenting her. That’s because the woman who made her name as a glamour model switched careers last year to become a bodybuilder. Photographs of her looking as if her physique had been chiselled from a large chunk of mahogany were splashed all over the tabloids.

Things were very different for her as a child. She has spoken often of the emotional scarring left by being bullied, and now she’s hoping that revealing what happened to her in Jodie Marsh – Bullied: My Secret Past can help others still suffering in a similar situation.

Her bullying began at school when she was teased for having a crooked nose caused by a hockey injury. Now she discovers what support today’s bullying victims receive both inside and outside of school, and finds out whether it’s effective.