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It was fifth time lucky for BBC Three Counties Radio at the Sony Radio Awards this year as they walked off with the Gold Award for the Station of the Year (potential audience of 300,000 to 1 million listeners category) - after five successive nominations.

In awarding the Gold to BBC Three Counties, the judges said that the station "Has a wide range of original output that's executed with flair, wit and energy. It breaks away from the standard news agenda and delivers quality ideas with imagination".

Receiving the Station of the Year award!

Collecting the award from the Chairman of the Awards Committee Tim Blackmore MBE, Station Editor Mark Norman paid tribute to the listeners.

"Radio, whether you are in the commercial sector or the BBC, is nothing without its audience" he said.

"We ask our audience to come out and play with us every single day of every week of ever year, and this award is for them as much as anybody else."

In addition, two of the station’s individual programmes were also successful.

BBC Three Counties Breakfast, hosted by Roberto Perrone, won the Gold award in the Interactive Radio category for a programme broadcast last year responding to a bride stuck in traffic on the M1, just hours before her wedding.

Before presenting the award to Roberto, Esther Rantzen said that the judges considered that this programme "unmissable radio where we just had to hear the outcome".

They also said that "the listeners largely produced this programme" and that this "demonstrates true interactivity".

Esther Rantzen with Roberto and Louisa

In his acceptance speech, Roberto praised his listeners for their involvement in the programme.

"Every single day on BBC Three Counties Radio we try and create a little bit of magic and we did that day" he said.

"I want to thank the listeners for being so interactive EVERY day with us."

The other nominees in this category were Eddie Nestor On Sunday - BBC London 94.9; Groundswell - BBC Radio Nottingham; The Jon Gaunt Show - BBC WM and The Stephen Nolan Show - BBC Radio Ulster.

Stephen Rhodes took the Bronze Award in the Speech Broadcaster of the Year category which was won by BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine.

This was the seventh time that Stephen had been nominated for an award and as well as Vine he was up against Nick Ferrari on LBC 97.3, Simon Mayo on BBC Radio News for Five Live and BBC Radio Ulster’s Stephen Nolan.

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