The Alternative MAD Awards - Who's the Mummy?

So, it’s been a week since the inaugural MAD Awards at Butlins, where the UK’s top Mummy and Daddy bloggers claimed their awards for being, well, just brilliant, really.

A massive thanks to Butlins and to all our sponsors, with special mentions to Philips for kicking off a blender-related scandal, and Kinder for providing me with the biggest pile of chocolate I’ve ever seen in my life.

There are stacks of posts about the awards dotted around (see the comments on this post for some of them) , so I thought I’d share with you some of my personal, alternative award winners:

Most Emotional Recipient of an Award: This award goes to Deb from Carrots and Kids who never thought she’d win the award for best photographer, but did. And no, Deb, it wasn’t by just one vote, either.

Most surprised recipient of an award: This award goes to Tim, who was so surprised when he won the Best Writer award he almost forgot to stand up. When he went on to win MAD Blogger of the Year, he got a standing ovation from everyone in the room – and gave a tremendous speech which was only cut short because poor David from Butlins was staggering under the weight of Tim’s prizes (a new Dell laptop, an iPhone 4 and a Flip HD camera, in case you were wondering) .

Best impromptu presenter of an award: This richly-deserved award goes to Heather from Notes from Lapland who was a last-minute substitution for someone who couldn’t attend. Apologies, Heather, that I forgot to mention the change to you. Still, I don’t think anyone’s going to forget your: “So, pictures. We all like those, don’t we?” speech for a long time.

Best Outfit: This award was hard to choose as everyone looked AMAZING but I think it's a tie between Shannon from Everyday Stranger and Pippa from A Mother’s Ramblings, both of whom looked spectacularly gorgeous in their dresses.

Most blatant cheating during the quiz: This dishonourable award goes to Sandy, who didn’t even try to hide the fact she was Tweeting during the picture round. Shameless.

Most successfully making a redcoat blush: This award definitely goes to Vix. I’m not going to tell you what she shouted at young Gary while he was warming up the crowd, but he looked half delighted and half terrified at the prospect.

Best accessorising of an outfit: We must salute Emma, for her innovative use of the electric tea-lights kindly donated by Philips, and an honourable mention must also go to Jo, for persuading some poor Butlins employee into providing the entire MADs crew with balloon hats for the after-party.

Most enterprising blagger blogger: This was a closely fought race, with finalists scoring some impressive commercial deals for the awards, ranging from free cars to drive to the awards (thanks, Citroen) to free train tickets, dresses and video cameras. But nothing will ever top the moment I realised that some bloggers at the MAD Awards were wearing sponsored underwear. Carol, Pippa and Claire, I salute you.

All that remains is for me to thank those who have kindly let me use their pictures in this post. If you want to see more photos from the MADs then check out our Flickr stream and Facebook album. You will also be able to see video footage from the awards soon on the MADs website.