We’ve had the official News story on this month’s Kinect Sports: Season Two BAFTA win, but we thought it was worth complementing with a report direct from the scene. So we pinned down Simon, one of Rare’s delegates for the evening, and persuaded him to hand over a folder full of pictures and a rundown of the event from the rough vicinity of the red carpet and champagne seats….

Simon: The night started with the ten of us meeting outside our hotel, donning pretty much the same black tie attire, ready to set off to the Hilton on Park Lane. We were handed our golden tickets for the event before jumping into black cabs for the short ride.

Once we arrived, we made our way into the front entrance and then found out there was a red carpet around the back! As we realised this may be a once in a lifetime chance, we walked back outside, around the hotel and down the red carpet. No-one asked for our autographs for some reason, but it was worth it all the same…

We made our way upstairs for the champagne reception. The room was packed with invitees all dressed to the max, and we enjoyed catching up with some ex-Rareites whilst sipping the enormous amounts of champagne on offer. The room was quite large but you could hardly move, and after a couple of glasses of champagne it really started to heat up.

Just as everyone was starting to glisten with sweat we were thankfully called to take our seats. Table 43 was the Rare table, each of us were given a programme for the night and some BAFTA hotel chocolates, all very exciting! Sitting at the next table were Jonathan Ross and his wife and young lad. I decided I’d get a cheeky paparazzi-style photo by pretending to take one of Paul and Adam… cunning.

The main course was a rack of lamb which, much to my disappointment, was finished off by everyone else on the table. The chocolates which came with the coffee came sat on an actual tray made of chocolate. Amazing. It was then that we were ‘treated’ to a performance from The Saturdays. They ‘sang’ three songs for us (sadly I can’t remember the names) before the real proceedings began. Host Dara O Briain was fantastic and kept the night running well with his stand-up comedy, most of which was actually gaming-related.

I think there were around 16 awards in total and we had to wait a very long time for the Sports/Fitness category to come by. When it did I began to feel nervous – not really sure why because I honestly didn’t believe we’d win with some of the games we were up against. When our name was read out it was such an amazing moment, and despite the shock we still managed to cheer rather loudly (mostly with the help of Studio Manager Scott). Scott, Craig and Lee all went up to accept the award, and I began to film it with my camera before realising our table was being filmed by the camera crew; it was us who won, I shouldn’t be filming, I thought as I slowly lowered my camera back down to the table…

A long while later, and after LittleBigPlanet 2 was awarded best Family game in the other category where we were nominated, Scott, Craig and Lee all came back into the room with not one but three BAFTA trophies! Awesome, I thought, we don’t have to fight over them all night. Within about two minutes we had all updated our Facebook profiles.

The ceremony pretty much ended at this point, and we all made our way outside with the trophies to take some photos with the official backdrop and to start drinking more of the free bar on offer. I was buzzing from what had happened. Trophy in one hand, champagne in the other, I felt incredibly proud to be part of the Rare team that had won this award, and very privileged to have been given the opportunity to represent the company on the night!

BAFTA had set up the after party room with arcade machines and retro consoles, but we couldn’t take our attention away from the trophies which we passed around all night. They’re incredibly heavy, so it was pretty hard work to hold on to one for more than five minutes. Probably a good thing as we wouldn’t have let go otherwise.

There were a few photo opportunities – some of us grabbed Jonathan Ross on his way out, we managed a group photo with Dara O Briain and even tried to play ‘how many Rare developers can we fit into one photo booth?’ (not that many as it turned out, but fun all the same).

The night ended at around 1:30am, and heading back to the hotel it started to seem like a real possibility that I could do a Steven Gerrard and sleep with the trophy. So with a big grin on my face, I did just that…