In his new series, Simon Reeve travels to Russia on the centenary of the Revolution to find out what life is really like in the Federation

It’s violent. It’s explosive. And it’s going out live on Dave, "the Home of Witty Banter".

It doesn’t. For inspiration, I look at Victoria’s own watercolours of Christmas at Windsor. Albert wanted to recreate the Christmases of his Coburg childhood and he put up a tree for each of their nine children, hanging them from the ceiling with tables, called altars, for presents underneath. For all their cosy, domestic image Victoria and Albert, weren’t afraid of a little bling.

You can’t just get up one morning and decide to be an explorer.

Well, you can, but you’re not going to get on television with that attitude. You’ve got to jump through lots of hoops to get there and it’s not just a case of how many countries you’ve been to. You don’t have to join the Army to get into TV, but I think it’s good to have some level of expertise or niche knowledge. Once you’re an expert in anything, in any industry, people will come to you. That’s where you want to be.

But, argued the actors, writers and producers on the panel at an RTS event in mid-July – “LGBTQ in soap: job done?” ­– the fight against prejudice is not yet won.

“Soaps are incredibly powerful in terms of being able to get a message out and in changing people’s perceptions,” said Daniel Brocklebank, who plays gay vicar Billy Mayhew in Coronation Street.

Chaired by Philip Edgar-Jones, Director of Sky Arts, the awards recognise the best audiovisual work created by students across the UK and Republic of Ireland at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Awards are judged in six categories – Animation, Comedy & Entertainment, Drama, Factual, News and Short Feature.

As part of the RTS Inside Sky’s Election Campaign series, Sky’s Head of Politics, Specialist and Business Journalism Esme Wren, who is overseeing the broadcaster's election coverage, reveals her plans for covering the surprise General Election.

For the broadcaster, getting outside of London is key to covering the campaign, after lessons learned from the Brexit and 2015 General Election coverage where the opinion polls were out of touch with the final result.

Other speakers include Andy Harries, Chief Executive of Left Bank Pictures; The Grand Tour executive producer, Andy Wilman; Michelle Guthrie, Managing Director of Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Sharon White, Chief Executive of Ofcom – with more names to be announced.