The charity raffle and auction on the night raised a total of £1530.80.

The National Happiness Awards are a team effort. Once a year, Laughology HQ activates a crew of people and organisations who leap into action to make sure the ceremony goes with a bang. 

There’s been no end of happiness following the success of the National Happiness Awards. Like a big smiley-faced ink blot, the happiness awards effect has been spreading out across communities.

The National Happiness Awards winners have basked in the glow of positive media attention and the awards have been covered across the UK in regional newspapers and nationally on platforms as diverse as Mailonline, Huffington Post, The Sun and BBC radio.

Buoyed by victory, our Happiest Primary School, Flakefleet Primary, has been making waves with a bid for the Christmas number one spot in the charts. Staff and pupils at the school have produced a charity single, Light Up, and even managed to talk their way into the BBC Radio 2 studios earlier this month when they were invited in by Breakfast Show host Chris Evans.

Money raised from the sale of the song will go to the Alzheimer’s Society and pupils of the Fylde Coast school have now sold enough copies to make the Top 40 at Christmas with no budget, no PR and no record label. The video for the single features children from the school taking elderly residents from nearby Fleetwood Hall Care Home to Blackpool for a day of fun and has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media.

Over in Ross-on-Wye, our Happiest Workplace Person, Natalie Morgan-Dew, put her prize money to good use by buying pizza for all the students at her dance studio she runs. Natalie beat a range of mental health problems and set up the alternative dance studio – Mizz Twisted Cherry - where mental health wellbeing is just as important as fitness and fresh moves. She uses her empathy to help other women at the studios and they all settled down to a pile of pizza earlier this month courtesy of Natalie’s winnings.

Our Happiest Team also gave something back. Theodora Children’s Charity funds and manages a team of specially trained performers who bring joy and laughter to sick and disabled children. Last year these ‘Giggle Doctors’ visited over 33,000 children in hospitals, hospices and care homes. The winning team donated all their winnings to the charity they work for. And we at Laughology thought that was such a lovely gesture, that we matched it with our own donation.

At Laughology HQ we are overjoyed that the Happiness Awards continue to make a positive impact on winners and finalists and, believe it or not, we’ve already begun to plan next year.

It’s been another bumper year with almost 200 entries from some of the happiest people and places in the UK.

After hours of deliberation, gallons of burnt midnight oil, mouthfuls of nail-biting suspense and some very tough decisions, our independent judging panel have done their duty and are now having a lie down in a darkened room.

Over the last 12 months, the team at BUPA UK have been on a 'journey to a happier place'. That place has become known as 'BUPA Place' a new state-of-the-art building, in Salford Quays, Manchester.

The Wolverhampton-based NHS Leadership Development Team 'educate, develop and support other teams and individuals to maintain their happiness at work', according to Catherine Lisseman, who nominated the team for a National Happiness Award 2018. We are 'champions of positivity and ok-ness', she added in her nomination.

Mizz Twisted Cherry Studios, an aerial and alternative dance studio, in Ross-on-Wye, and Natalie Morgan-Dew, its owner, are nominated in both the Happiest Workplace, and Happiest Workplace Person categories of the National Happiness Awards 2018.

University Centre Shrewsbury is a distinctive institution, focused on high-quality teaching and research, fostering entrepreneurship, contributing to the community and, ultimately, making a global impact.

Breaking Barriers NW (BBNW) is a charity which was set up to raise awareness and challenge the barriers to the inclusion of disabled children & young people across the North West.

The O2 UK Territory Trainer Team's mission, who have been nominated by Jonny Cain, in the Happiest Team category of the National Happiness Awards 2018, is a training team within O2 who get people to 'think differently' with 'fun and engaging' training and creating a learning environment which delivers results.

Boo Coaching & Consulting, based in a magnificent 19th-century, grade II listed Bolton church called All Souls, is rooted in its community.

Despite winning Happiest School in the 2017 National Happiness Awards, it appears there is still space in Fourfields Community Primary School's bulging trophy cabinet - and it looks Happiest School Person 2018 shaped.

The Camberley All Night Cafe provides food and shelter in a safe environment to veterans and the homeless. It is completely self-funded and relies on goodwill, enterprise, community fundraising and donations of food.

Kingfisher Special School has the most uplifting, beautiful kids you will ever meet - and it rocks!, according to Nicola Found, Director of Creative Learning at the school, a designated primary special school for children with complex and severe learning needs in Oldham.

School life makes Toby one very happy little boy, according to his mum, Amy Gilmour.

From stripping down to underwear in a school office to investment bank farts - get to know the happiness awards judges a little bit better as they answer some 'probing' questions!

Since the beginning of the National Happiness Awards, one of our favourite categories has always been Happiest Pupil, won in 2017 by Callum Carr from St Matthews Primary School in Luton.

Is it the scone eating demonstrations or the effervescent personality that has earned Loretta Gray, Marketing and Social Media Manager at Crestwood Community School, Eastleigh, two nominations for the Happiest School Person 2018 award? We at Laughology Towers are not sure, but frankly we don't care because we love both of them.

What has the drummer from the band Smokie, a professional golfer, an ex-Premier League footballer, a singer in a local band and Pauline the Postmistress got in common? They have all tasted the delights of school dinners at the top table in Wolviston Primary School.

'Mr Smiley', otherwise known as Steve Hill, Deputy Headteacher of St Joseph's RC School, in Shaw, Oldham, has smiled his way to a happiness award nomination.

Like a premiership winning side they continue to perform at the top of their game after a period of transition and expansion, along with a move to new premises. They have bonded quickly', and go out of their way for each other.

The National Happiness Awards 2018 are open for business and it’s time to recognise your business or organisation or make an individual happy by making a nomination.

The National Happiness Awards 2018 nominations for education are open, and it’s time to recognise your school or make a student happy by submitting a nomination.

Meet Debs Gallagher, the happiness superhero who won the coveted title of Happiest Workplace Person in 2017. Debs,  is a manager at Virgin Active gym in Nottingham and her staff and customers love her.

From huge dogs and unsuspecting husbands to matching damson knickers - get to know the happiness awards judges a little bit better as they answer some 'probing' questions!

999: What's your emergency? I've just busted my gut laughing, thanks to the Giggle Doctors. This crack team of laughter medicine experts are the latest nominees for the National Happiness Awards.

'Loretta is a light in everyone’s day...she has brought so much joy to our wider school community', according to David Tully, her colleague and an English Teacher at Crestwood Community School, who has nominated Loretta Gray in the Happiest School Person category of the National Happiness Awards 2018.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent to us at the National Happiness Awards that the oeuvre of eighties comic Russ Abbot is a mixed bag. His Spanish crooner character, Julio Doubleglazias, was frankly, a lazy stereotype. And his ginger-wigged C.U. Jimmy character set English and Scottish relations back several decades. On one thing however, we can agree. Just like Russ, we love a party with a happy atmosphere. In fact, when you are organising the boldest and brightest award ceremony in the country, a happy atmosphere is not just a pre-requisite, it is essential.

Here at the National Happiness Awards we like clumsy, overblown metaphors. Which is why we like to describe our long-standing relationship with Crown House Publishing as a deeply spiritual bond. In fact, if the story of the Awards were written in biblical terms, Crown House Publishing would be there with us at the beginning, in the Garden of Eden. An Adam to our Eve.

Here at the National Happiness Awards, we never miss the opportunity to shoehorn in a clumsy 1980s cultural reference. So, to slightly paraphrase Spandau Ballet, we’d like to introduce Fit2Communicate, who also believe in our goals, and whose dedication to positive communication in education is indestructible. In fact, they are gold.

Milton Hall Primary School and Nursery have been nominated in the Happiest School category of the National Happiness Awards 2018.

Alison Lidster, General Manager of Liberty Quays, Medway, has nominated them for the Happiest Team category in the National Happiness Awards 2018.

Rewarding your high-achieving and valued members of staff with drugs would be wrong, dangerous, irresponsible and highly inappropriate (unless you happen to be the boss of a drugs cartel).*

In the 1989 Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams, the main character, farmer Ray Kinsella, builds a baseball pitch for ghosts because a voice in his head tells him: ‘if you built it, he will come’. Underneath the Hollywood schmaltz, the movie had a message. If you follow your dreams and create the right environment, amazing things can happen.

We have had some great Nominations for the National Happiness Awards 2018 during the last few days. This nomination for the schools and education category of the awards comes from Vanessa Loubier, a Modern Foreign Language Teacher at Regents Park Community College in Southampton.

We know what it’s like. It’s been a long hot summer already. You’re looking forward to the holidays and there’s that issue with Dave in accounts that you need to deal with. In the middle of it all, here we are, cropping up in your inbox to announce the 2018 National Happiness Awards. Hooray!

Wyboston Lakes has been nominated for a Happiest Workforce nomination. Ellie, an employee at Wybston Lakes, who submitted the nomination, said:

According to Fionna Byre, Deputy Headteacher, it is, and that's why she has nominated them for the Happiest School in the National Happiness Awards 2108.

Here at the National Happiness Awards, we believe in the proverb that you can judge a person by the company they keep. Which is why we love to work with people who share our values and support our mission to celebrate the people and places making the world better through happiness.

We are delighted to announce that the 2018 National Happiness Awards will be held on November 16th and that nominations are now open.

We know what it’s like. It’s been a long, hot summer. You’re looking forward to the end of term and the holidays, and here we are, cropping up in your inbox to announce the 2018 National Happiness Awards. Hooray!

The nominations for the National Happiness Awards 2018 have only been open a few days, and already entries have started to roll in. One of our favourites so far is from Lindsey Kelly who nominated the Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust Podiatry Admin team in St Albans for the Happiest Team award.