Star date: 31st December 2010

THE SALFORD STAR MARY BURNS AWARDS: DAY 8

THE TEXTER OF THE YEAR AWARD

This Award is given for outstanding services to mobile phone texting. And this year's winner is someone who was in a high profile public job but sent two outrageous texts – one racist, one homophobic – before finally resigning in October to "achieve a better work life balance".

Ladies and Gentlemen. THE TEXTER OF THE YEAR AWARD goes to…

Please do a drum roll and click here…

STEVE BROOMHEAD, ex chief executive of North West Development Agency.

Steve Broomhead, the former chief exec of the North West Development Agency (NWDA) was outed in August this year for texting a gay joke about Elton John's `helmet' - while the NWDA was encouraging diversity policies and sponsoring walks against homophobia. 

In 2007 Steve Broomhead was given a formal written warning after admitting sending a text joke about `Pakis' to a driver in a private hire firm. The text was discovered on the driver's mobile phone by the hire firm's boss after the driver was recruited by the NWDA and left his old job. A further forensic examination of the phone recently revealed a second text containing a gay joke.

The Salford Star called for Steve Broomhead's resignation – and, after the scandal had died down and the ConDem Government confirmed that the NWDA would be scrapped in 2012, Broomhead duly resigned as of 22nd October this year.

This wasn't the first time that Steve Broomhead - 2009 NWDA salary package £196,942 plus a CETV pension pot of almost £1million - had been involved in controversy. A few years ago he had to explain two tax payer funded chauffeur driven trips to the Rugby Challenge Cup finals, and recently had to defend an attack from David Cameron over NWDA office space in the `surf paradise' of Orange County, USA.

Since resigning from the NWDA to "achieve a better work life balance", Broomhead has reinvented himself as `Professor Broomhead' at Liverpool Hope University, teaching `Entrepeneurial Education', whatever that might mean.

"I will be helping to position the University for the new higher education open market while maintaining its distinctive mission and values" he says on the Hope University website. Just as long as those `values' don't mention diversity, eh? 

Ladies and Gentlemen. THE TEXTER OF THE YEAR AWARD goes to STEVE `PROFESSOR' BROOMHEAD

Applause.

Full details on this story here and here…

See the latest Mary Burns Award here and follow the links at the end of the feature for more.