WHILE watching the National Television Awards this week I made my usual attempts to guess who would win.

The usual suspects appeared category after category.

The soaps, a handful of dramas including Doctor Foster, Broadchurch and Sherlock, and the daytime favourites from This Morning to the Chase.

In fact, apart from having invited the stars of several massive shows which have captured TV viewers imaginations this year, if you watched this you would be forgiven for thinking we still have only four channels.

Doctor Foster’s second series was welcome and diverting, but not a patch on the first one, and Sherlock was actually last on a year ago.

Since then there have been dozens of superior dramas - but since these are streamed or on satellite channels, they didn’t seem to get a look in.

Which is just not representative of viewing in the 21st Century.

I know the general public were voting but I just don’t think Broadchurch was the best drama I watched last year - or Doctor Foster.

And I realise the world might tip on its axis if Ant and Dec didn’t win best entertainment duo, now with the added kudos of Sir Bruce Forsyth’s name adorning it’s shiny surface, but it is getting boring.

As is Holly and Phil scooping best daytime show for This Morning. It would be good to have had a few surprises - they all say the same thing when they win on stage and then again when they are accosted by a clueless I’m a Celebrity Winner backstage.

Toff, Made in Chelsea star and recent Jungle victor, took the place of her predecessor Scarlett Moffatt in order to carry out fatuous post win chats with the celebs.

In fact, they all said exactly what they had said on stage before a slightly panicked looking Toff handed back to Dermot. It added nothing.

This awards honour must be written into the I’m a Celeb winner’s contract - soon she will replace Scarlett as sidekick on Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway and present Streetmate.

Scarlett needs to keep a look out over her shoulder.

It irrationally annoys me - as it does every time a former sports star becomes a journalist on the One Show.

And don’t get me started on Freddie Flintoff and his fledgling acting career.

It was very odd when he popped up as a fictitious football star on Kay Mellor’s Love Lies and Records at the tail end of last year.

While he actually did sort of hold his own - and was nowhere near as wooden as Girls Aloud’s Sarah Harding during her ill-fated Coronation Street sojourn - I couldn’t help thinking of all those poor theatre school graduates desperately trying to get their break while Flintoff sails in with not a single acting credit to his name.

He will probably win a National TV award next year.