Awards ceremonies. Slightly awkward affairs where the great and good of a particular industry indulge in what is sometimes nauseating and occasionally insincere back-slapping.
Usually associated with creative professions and typified by the emetic acceptance speeches of actors lacking any semblance of self-awareness, these annual get-togethers have long since become an established part of many a career - some more worthy than others. Teaching, healthcare, operational excellence in a health and beauty retailer (just trust me on that one). Be it a vocation or merely an occupation, recognition and the desire for it is widespread.
It is no surprise that awards for journalism predate many of these more recent attempts to aggrandise the average or turn a calling into a red carpet career. By its very nature, journalism is a competitive industry - the desire to expose and to be first in doing so runs deep. That competitive edge, coupled with gallons of free-flowing booze, does not always make for the most edifying of spectacles, especially when rival print outlets are gathered in the same room.
I have no way of knowing whether broadcast journalists were any better behaved at the Royal Television Society's TV Journalism Awards last night, though I very much suspect they were. If nothing else, any unseemly scenes involving TV's most-respected faces would be far more damaging than a bust-up between largely unknown hacks at a naval-gazing junket. Yet this presumed good behaviour is probably also attributable to the fact that broadcast journalism largely fosters a very particular kind of competition.
It is a competition which, whilst as intense as that in any branch of the profession, appears more capable of genuinely recognising the achievements of others in the field. Of course, all self-respecting broadcast journalists compete in the pursuit of plaudits for themselves and their employers. In the process, however, they seem ready to acknowledge that it is the collective endeavours of the entire industry which serve to maintain and advance its reputation as a trusted and worthy source of news in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.
Not for a minute does this create some kind of "after you, Sir" collusion, with journalists collaborating for a greater good - witness the wariness over the proposal even to share technical facilities for regional news across the BBC and ITV. Yet the common standards and regulations binding broadcast journalism stand in marked contrast to a print press riven with political and, as evidenced this week, commercial considerations.
Print journalists would no doubt rightly posit that in the cossetted world of the licence fee on the one hand and OFCOM news quotas on the other, broadcast journalism can afford its big-picture perspective. Whilst newspaper groups delight in and increasingly instigate the travails of their rivals, television and radio news is founded on a less grudging form of shared respect.
Of course none of this means that the nation's broadcast newsrooms are fully paid-up members of a mutual appreciation society and nor should they be. Neither does it mean that there is not some ill-founded snobbery about the relative merits of different outlets. But does Dispatches really seek the downfall of Panorama? Does BBC News long for the oft-forecast disappearance of its dogged ITV rival? It would be beyond foolish if they did.
As last night's RTS attendees reflect on their personal achievements, the winners, the runners-up and the how-the-hell-wasn't-I-nominated can take heart from the strength of the competition - both for the awards themselves and for content on a daily basis. Without it, there would be far less worth getting dressed up for.
