RTS Programme Awards

Dickens is the writer behind BBC Three drama Thirteen, the channel’s flagship programme following its move online

The show follows 26-year old Ivy Moxam (Jodie Comer) who finds her way home 13 years after she was abducted on her way from school.

“There [were] several other projects in development around the same time of someone being captured and escaping,” recalls Dickens. “But most of them were told that way: captured and escaping.”

“We basically started where a show might end and tried [to] be as forward-looking as possible.”

Sean O’Connor insists that not much has changed since he returned to EastEnders as executive producer last summer, after an 11-year absence from the soap.

“All these shows renew themselves…I think they are sort of like chameleons, they change for the time that they are written in and are performed in but fundamentally they remain the same.”

After jumping ship from Hollyoaks to Emmerdale, MacLeod explains his excitement at bringing new ideas to the Yorkshire-based soap.

“I’m always looking for ways to do something differently or surprise the audience with something they haven’t thought of before,” he says.

And that he did. During a week-long storyline, which was ten months in the making, the small village turned to chaos when a multi-car pile up left viewers guessing who would exit the soap, with central characters at the heart of one of the biggest disasters in Emmerdale history.

This year they have been nominated for their 13^th RTS award, and are up against Romesh Ranganathan and The Last Leg in the Entertainment Performance category.

This nomination follows the duo’s success in the category last year, beating Adam Hills for The Last Leg, and Jack Whitehall for A League of Their Own.

Ant and Dec met while filming children’s drama Byker Grove in 1990, and they went on to present hit Saturday morning kids TV show SM:TV Live.

Ranganathan has been nominated alongside Ant and Dec, and The Last Leg boys in the Entertainment Performance category of this year’s RTS Programme Awards.

“I finally feel like I’ve got the validation I need to continue,” he says, when I meet him at his agent’s office in a hard-to-find Clerkenwell backstreet.

“It’s nice to be nominated alongside them, but I hope I win” he laughs. “And I’m not going to be humble about it if I do win either. I’m going to make sure I visit everyone and really go on about it.”

What does he make of his fellow nominees, I ask.

I've been travelling the country with the heavenly task of looking at restoration architecture, in connection with our daunting project at Glasgow School of Art (GSA) to rebuild the iconic Charles Rennie Mackintosh building, damaged by fire last May.

Miraculously, most of the building was saved by the incredible quick thinking, bravery and professionalism of the Scottish Fire and Rescue ­Service.

Tragically, though, we lost one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, the Mackintosh Library. We are, of course, going to rebuild it.