Apologies to those who didn’t get to the gala for the Recruiter Awards for Excellence 2009, supported by Thomas International on 28 April (if not, badger your bosses to reserve a table or two for next year), but for those who attended — winners and runnersup — and the Recruiter team, it was a highly enjoyable evening. (The ‘highly enjoyable evening’ may or may not be a euphemism for ‘consumed far too much champagne and can’t remember a thing about it’ — however, it definitely wasn’t from an editorial team standpoint…)

Michael McIntyre went down a storm, going seamlessly from award-presenting to lighthearted banter with a certain female from sponsor Itris software. We’d like to know whether her camera came with intelligent software and if she actually managed to take a decent picture of Michael in the end.

Bizarre stage appearance of the night went to the two pictured here (left). Firstly, they weren’t actually collecting an award; and secondly, we smell a rat in their story, told to one of our reporters, that they had “simply got lost on their way to the toilets”… Sure you did, boys. They also claimed they were from Morgan Hunt, which we now know is a bit of a porky. Reveal your identities and we’ll see if Michael McIntyre will give you a consolation award! Answers on a postcard as to the name of the award…

The male reporters on Recruiter’s team would like to point out that while they were chasing round getting comments from the award winners, at no time during the evening were they supposed to be taking on waiter duties, dishing out bottled water or chasing up where credit cards had got to. Although in hindsight they could’ve done with a bit of extra pocket money and admit they probably missed a trick.

Finally, everyone’s curious as to whether the Selby Jennings team, which came up on stage to collect the Best Financial Services & Banking Recruitment Firm award, has managed to secure a recording contract yet, following Michael McIntyre describing them as “a jazz trio”. Nice.

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