And the winner is . . .

He said a few words when accepting the main prize 'in believe', meaning 'unbelievable' in his Franglais, apparently. And not for him was it an opportunity to stick the proverbial two fingers up to Sullivan.

He told me afterwards that there was no problem between the two of them and that Sullivan had already passed on his congratulations.

Lee Carsley received the players' player-of-the-season trophy and Jacob Rowe the Academy player-of-the-season honour.

The most moving part of the night was when cancer suffered Helen Wills was named as supporter-of-the-season. Helen, said her husband Martin, had 'lost her hair, lost her job, some of her strength, but has never lost her commitment and passion for Birmingham City Football Club'.

Apparently she's not allowed to mingle in big crowds for fear of infection but doesn't let the specialists know she's a regular at St Andrew's. 'Don't tell 'em', she quipped. What an inspirational lady.

Entertainment was provided by Escala, the eye-catching electric string quartet, who made their name on ITV's Britain's Got Talent.

You could tell they were frustrated rock chicks just from the decibel level of their backing music.

They ended their set with I suppose what can only be described as 'posh metal', a version of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.

I'm not sure where they can actually go with their act, there's only so much you can do to stop every song sounding like music for a trendy car advert.

Alex McLeish, in his address to the 800-strong audience, certainly liked them. Although one gag went over a lot of peoples' heads.

"Absolutely unbelievable Escala . . . and I thought they were good violinists as well . . . "

Myself and Stacey Barnfield, our executive editor, hosted the Birmingham Mail table for six readers who cast votes in our players' poll, among them Jenny Eyre and her daughter Rachel from Solihull, ladies of fine taste . . . as they regularly log on to this blog!

Martin Taylor and Mehdi Nafti joined us as dinner guests (yes, Nafti is still at the club) and this reporter's favourite French-Tunisian was in his usual good humour.

When the conversation turned to Christophe Dugarry and what he was doing now, Nafti revealed that he was the Alan Hansen of French television pundits - only far, far better.

Le God is a regular on Canal Plus dissecting games and Nafti said he was brilliant at it, using only a few words to perfectly interpret the whys and wherefores.

"And he still refers to the season he had with Birmingham in the Premier League, and what the atmosphere was like," said Nafti.

Every week cameras go into Dugarry's house where he and his best pal Zinedine Zidane crack open a bottle, sit back and just talk; talk about football or anything that comes to mind. They just let them get on with it and it makes for fascinating, entertaining television apparently.

I reckon they should invite his erstwhile strike partner Geoff Horsfield over with a few tinnies as well; now that would be worth watching!

There were the usual auctions and raffles, with all monies raised going towards the Academy.

Djimi Traore was in determined mood when Muhammad Ali signed boxing trunks came under the hammer. He ended up going head-to-head with the boss of MK Contractors in a bidding war.

Traore eventually stopped £100 short of the £2,500 winning bid. There's a joke in there somewhere . . .

Rounding the evening off, the Outstanding Contribution to Birmingham City Football Club went to Jack Wiseman, who recently celebrated his 92nd birthday.

Jack, who suffered a stroke a couple of years back, is quite frail and couldn't attend in person to pick up the award.

A video was shown of him being presented with it at St Andrew's and his son and director Michael Wiseman informed us that Jack said no-one could really understand how much this meant to him, and it was the best birthday present he could ever have had.

There couldn't be a more deserving winner than old 'swingin', who first joined the board in 1956 and kept the club going when the Kumar brothers went bust in 1992.