Treble triumph for Abbott

Paul Abbott's mantelpiece, already creaking after numerous competition wins for the his series Shameless, will need reinforcing after a treble triumph at the Royal Television Society Awards this week.

Shameless won the Best Drama Series award, and was described by the judges as "Exciting, intelligent, mucky, poignant, raw, amusing, involving and always entertaining."

Abbott also won the award for Best Drama Writer, as well as the special Judges Award:

Tonight's recipient of the Judges’ Award has been working in television for the past 21 years and has already brought more than a hundred hours of drama to our screen. He is known for his high voltage energy, youthful disrespect for the obvious and a bravura ability to speak the unspeakable.

He started his career in Coronation Street in 1984, seamlessly combining high comedy with sharp and sometimes painful emotional truths and produced the second series of Cracker. He moved on to write the bewitching and compelling Reckless and Touching Evil - a series that explored the darker recesses of life.

Clocking Off in 1999 brilliantly demonstrated his compassion, rage and humorous ability to comment on the nature of the human condition, and with Linda Green, he made an ordinary life feel aspirational and inspirational. State of Play was a simply unmissable television event both entertaining and intriguing.

To top it all, last year, he created and wrote Shameless - one of his most personal, audacious, celebratory and downright dirty pieces of work to date. He was involved with every aspect of the production and it shows - from its style, pace and bravura casting to its emotional truth, social politics and comedy.