Cowell and Morgan beaten by Brooker and Theroux

Simon Cowell's efforts to achieve total domination of British TV while offering the general public the opportunity to humiliate themselves took another hammering on Tuesday night when both The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent were snubbed at the Royal Television Society Awards.

Instead the judges chose to honour the somewhat more cynical and highbrow presenters, Charlie Brooker and Louis Theroux.

Brooker's BBC4 satirical current affairs show, Newswipe, beat Cowell's The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent to win the entertainment category. Brooker was perhaps a fitting winner, since his fans are exactly the kind of people who bought Rage Against The Machine's single Killing In The Name in their thousands in order to prevent Simon Cowell's protegee Joe McElderry from getting the Christmas number one last December.

Meanwhile, Piers Morgan and James May lost out to Theroux who beat them to the best presenter award. Theroux won thanks to his documentary A Place For Paedophiles in which he interviewed American child molesters.

Heston Blumenthal won the features and lifestyle award for his Channel 4 series Heston's Feasts.

The two top acting awards went to black actors Naomie Harris and David Oyelowo, the stars of the BBC series Small Island about immigration from Jamaica in the 1940s and 1950s.

Armando Ianucci's BBC2 comedy The Thick Of It, starring Peter Capaldi as a potty-mouthed government spin doctor, beat The Inbetweeners and Miranda to the title of best scripted comedy.

In all BBC1 claimed nine awards and BBC2 and BBC4 won four each. Channel 4 took three, but ITV could only manage two.

One of those went to Tony Warren, the creator of Coronation Street, which helps The Jeremy Kyle Show celebrate its 1,000th episode this week in a postmodern tie-up . ·