The National Television Awards is a British television awards ceremony, broadcast by the ITV network and initiated in 1995. The National Television Awards are the most prominent ceremony for which the results are voted on by the general public. Because of the way the awards are decided, winners are not given the title "Best", but rather "Most Popular". The ceremony was traditionally held annually in October and hosted by Sir Trevor McDonald. However, after no ceremony was held in 2009, McDonald stepped down from the role, which passed to Dermot O'Leary. The January 2010 ceremony was hosted at the O2 arena.

Categories at the 2006 Awards ceremony, which was held on the evening on 31 October were: Entertainment Presenter, TV Contender, Entertainment Programme, Reality Programme, Drama, Serial Drama (soap opera), Newcomer, Actor, Actress, Quiz Programme, Daytime Programme, Comedy and Factual Programme. Viewers can vote for the short-list of nominees from an initial long list prepared by ITV, and then later can vote by text message, the official website and phone for which of the nominees in each category should win. The awards ceremony, held at the Royal Albert Hall, (until 2010 when it moved to the O2 Arena) is shown in full by ITV. This is sometimes live, but has also been the evening after it takes place, by which time the results have usually been widely reported in the British media.

Anthony McPartlin (born 18 November 1975) and Declan Donnelly (born 25 September 1975), known collectively as Ant & Dec, are an English comedy and TV presenting duo from Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The duo first rose to fame as actors on the children's television show Byker Grove, during which and in their subsequent pop career they were respectively known as PJ & Duncan – the names of the characters they played on the show. Since then, Ant & Dec have had a very successful career as TV presenters, presenting shows such as SMTV Live, Friends Like These, Pop Idol, Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, PokerFace, Push the Button, Britain's Got Talent, Red or Black? and Text Santa. They have also returned to acting, starring in a 2002 Tribute to The Likely Lads and the 2006 film Alien Autopsy.

Ant is the taller of the two at 5'8" (1.73 m) and Dec is two inches shorter at 5'6" (1.68 m). It is a running joke that many people do not know who is Ant and who is Dec, even though their appearances differ significantly. To assist with identification, they follow the 180 degree rule; all their TV appearances and publicity photos have Ant on the left and Dec on the right, but even this does not help everyone.

Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English film, television, radio and theatre actor. His most acclaimed roles include Stephen Hawking in the BBC drama Hawking (2004); William Pitt in the historical film Amazing Grace (2006); the protagonist Stephen Ezard in the miniseries thriller The Last Enemy (2008); Paul Marshall in Atonement (2007); Bernard in Small Island (2009); Sherlock Holmes in the modern BBC adaptation series Sherlock (2010); and Peter Guillam in the spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011).

In February 2011, he began playing both Victor Frankenstein and his creature opposite Jonny Lee Miller in Danny Boyle's stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The play had a three-month run at the National Theatre. In late 2011, he played Major Stewart in Steven Spielberg's War Horse (2011). The film received five BAFTA nominations and six Academy Award nominations, including the Best Picture nomination in 2012. He also played Peter Guillam, one of the pivotal roles in Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011), which was nominated for three Academy Awards and 11 BAFTA Awards. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was also nominated for Best Picture in 2012.

Gary Barlow (born 20 January 1971) is an English singer-songwriter, pianist and record producer. He is frontman and lead vocalist of pop group Take That and the head judge on the The X Factor. Barlow is one of Britain's most successful songwriters. He has had two Number 1 singles and a Number 1 album as a solo artist, and has had sixteen top 5 hits, eleven Number 1 singles and seven Number 1 albums with Take That. He is also a six-time recipient of the Ivor Novello Award and has sold over 45 million records worldwide with Take That.

In Barlow's autobiography, he relates that his love of music began at an early age.

"I was one of those kids that's forever dancing in front of the TV looking at my reflection."

He said he enjoyed watching Top of the Pops on television, and when he was ten years old, he watched an episode of the programme in which Depeche Mode were performing their new single "Just Can't Get Enough". Barlow was mesmerised by the sound and decided he wanted a keyboard for Christmas. For the next few years, he spent most of his spare time teaching himself to play his favourite songs.

Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.

After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.

He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.

As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.