Was the Oracle Retail Week Awards last night and I reckon it was the best yet.

We had a great turnout of retailers and the odd sporting celeb too - had to do a double take when Andrew Strauss came up to the top table to say hi, and again when I saw a man on the Primark table who looked a lot like Wolves manager Mick McCarthy. Indeed it was him- apparently he made friends with the management of Primark while he was running the Irish team.

We changed the format this year so that the comedian came on first and then the awards were presented by Jeremy Vine and myself. Jeremy was a true pro and a lovely fellow, but the star of the show was Aussie musical comedian Tim Minchin, who penned a song about retail - it went down a storm.

I was sat between Ian Cheshire of Kingfisher and Waitrose boss Mark Price, two of the nicest guys in the business, and I was chuffed for Mark that we won the Retail Leader of the Year category. With the help of his brilliant PA Zoe and head of PR Christine we managed to change his diary to make sure he came, but he clearly hadn’t twigged that it was because he had one of the very biggest awards to collect. It was very well deserved, and you can read more about his transformation of Waitrose in an excellent interview Jen has done in today’s magazine.

But it was Primark’s night and for Arthur Ryan to come to collect the award made it quite some occasion. Arthur is a legend of fashion retailing but he never comes to any events, and there wasn’t even a photograph of him in existence before last night. There were two very touching tributes to him, first from Sir Philip Green by video, and then from George Weston, CEO of Primark’s parent company ABF.

Primark came apart almost by accident, with Ryan being initially approached by Weston’s grandfather, and then bumping into him again in a Dublin street when they thrashed out a deal. It’s developed into an extraordinary business and even though he’s stepped down as chief exec, Ryan’s successor Paul Marchant told me Ryan still comes in every day to do the markdowns. He’s a legend of fashion retailing.

A really good night, congratulations to all the winners - a full list is on the RW site.

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