As  a past pupil and the local web-head I’ve been asked to award a small prize in each of the four categories. In return, I get to put my logo on the main school website and, get this, I am to be the judge.

Now I’ve no experience of judging and the only experience of a judge I have is one I try to forget. So I’ve been doing some research. As you do

After an exhaustive trawl and numerous emails to contacts I was finally pointed toward a website that answered all my questions: StatCounter.com

Turns out its dead easy. All I have to do is look at the first page for an average of about 20 seconds. If I accidentally click on a second page or inadvertently scroll down then so be it, but it isn’t necessary.

If I’m judging the My Family category and see something that comes under Nature then I tut-tut a bit and rule out that site.

Not that any of this matters. I’ve already decided who the winners are. David Nolan has to get the Sports award because I know his dad since we were kids. Kate Maher is getting the Music one because I don’t know any of the other entrants in that category.

I suppose I’ll have to go through the motions though.

A real money spinner if there ever was one. Way back some professional event organiser thought to himself “hey, no one’s ever ran an award for being a plain old fashioned Irish mammy”. So he started making a list of what products old fashioned Irish mammies use and he came up with cookers – they cook a lot. He phoned up Calor and pitched them. They handed over ten grand and threw in a cooker and a barrel of butane. The Calor Housewife of the Year was born.

He organised a big gala event with celebrity judges, high profile MC, TV cameras, the works and Molly Brennan was presented with a brand new 6-ring hob, an oven you could fit half a heifer in, her own gas pipeline from Kinsale and a bunch of flowers. (Always the flowers. Millions upon millions of flowers die every day to keep women horny happy).

It cost him 8 grand to run and he pocketed 2.

Down the years the numbers of awards exploded. There was money to be made telling people how great they were. Even more money if you got the nominees to pay to enter. And even more if you charged them to come collect their awards. For a few quid the mediocre could be The Best.

Ireland being Ireland, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. “Join the civil service – you’ll have a job for life”. “Open a golf course – people will pay anything to play”. “Get into computers – that’s the coming thing”. “Buy overseas property – that’s where the money’s to be made”.

And pretty soon there were awards for everything. Things to have awards for were running out.

All seemed stagnant until some bright spark thought of the Internet. “Let’s have Internet awards”, he told his boss. “What? For the lads that make them websites?” “God no”, he explained, “for the companies that have them made. Shur they’re the ones with the shillings!”

And so The Golden Spiders was born.

For the right money, a company that doesn’t trade online could be Best Retail & Home Shopping Website. “You want to win something? You don’t actually do anything on the web other than look pretty, but eh, let me see … how about the Best Broadband Application Award? Maybe you’d prefer Best Broadband Content? No, hold on – no other car crowd has entered so you can be Best Motor“.

It didn’t have to make sense. It was all about money.

All this stuff about paying money didn’t suit the real Internetty people. Real Internetty people like free stuff. The Internet serves up free software, movies, books, sex, kittens, sex kittens – paying for stuff is bad.

An alternative, the Golden Crab Awards, kindly disorganised by Silver Haired Internet Technology, tried make its mark. And failed.

As well as free stuff, real Internetty people like blogs and so a bouncing baby Blog Awards was born. The rules were simple made up on the fly you had to be rumoured … Fuck it, what am I saying? I never seen any.

The Ugly Blog Ball miscarried (the parents may try again next year) but the Blog Awards’ baby brother, the Irish Web Awards, went full term. Like all second born tend to be, it was brighter. It even had a scorecard. And it was for the people, by the people, all the people, all the time, that kind of thing.

Apparently there is always room for another awards show. (Could have fooled me – I thought the awards space was bulging like Mary Harney’s knickers already). So in 2009 I will be running the very first Best Awards Awards to showcase the best Ireland has to offer in annual awards.

The rules:

• Awards nominated must have a strong connection with Ireland. Or a weak one. Or none at all.
• Awards must be for achievements in Internet related activities. Or running a county council. Or knitting. Or running an online knitting council. Whatever.
• Nominees must abide by the rules. Judges may or may not abide by the rules at their discretion. Note: This rule may be changed; dropped; reinstated. Nominees must not abide by the rules.
• Complaints will be dealt with efficiently, quickly and appropriately. Complaints will be ignored. Complainants will be assumed to be cry-babies whinging just because they didn’t win.
• Appropriate prizes will be given. e.g. Should the Best Soccer Player Awards be chosen the FAI will be given sliotars, rugby balls etc. so they can teach their members to play a real sport. Should the Best TV Personality Awards win, station management teams will be given anti-delusional counselling. There will be no prizes.
• Nominations may be made in comments below. The winners have already been chosen.
• Further rules will be published here. Or somewhere else. There are no rules.

If this goes according to plan next year Ireland’s Best Awards Awards could be in the running for the International Best Awards Awards Awards.