Sky’s rise has been extraordinary. But there are challenges ahead in the next couple of years.

At the modest age of only twenty, BSkyB is the youngest company ever to have taken the BMAC title. The speed of this achievement - from registration at Companies House to being the most admired business in the land - is quite extraordinary. It’s a tribute to a ruthlessly focussed, highly competitive outfit which has left its media peer group for dead.

I recall its launch very clearly – there was all sorts of hilarity about ‘squarials’, satellites that didn’t work and embarrassingly bad content. The first few years were very precarious indeed and nearly dragged founder Rupert Murdoch under. But the turning point came in 1992, with the first exclusive deal to show live Premier League football. Murdoch believed, quite correctly, that live sport – especially football – was the ‘battering ram’ for pay television. It takes someone who can remember Grandstand or the bow-tied and beaming Dickie Davies to realise how brutally he has battered the oppo to the canvas.  

Sceptics thought recession might be its undoing. Sky costs me getting on for sixty quid a month, but I’m not the only one reluctant to give it up. Indeed, it’s still growing and is now in six million UK homes. With the arrival of high definition, broadband and now football matches available on your iPhone, the innovation keeps coming.  

Now it has to move onto its next phase – out of adolescence and into maturity. Sky has been a pretty bolshie kid. The previous CEO (now chairman) James Murdoch loved being The Outsider, constantly referring to Sky’s ‘challenger’ culture and relentlessly attacking the TV establishment. But Sky is now the establishment, and has attracted the notice of those who feel it wields too much power. So the TV ‘Crown Jewels’ have now been extended to include The Ashes and there are competition rumblings about widening access to live football. And how will it cope with the furious growth of streamed internet content? The next couple of years will be crucial to Sky’s long term future.

Down at the other end of the size scale, there are two worthy sector winners. First is Majestic, which carried off the Specialist Retailers division, beating such giants as Mothercare, WH Smith and Carphone Warehouse.  It’s a great business, brilliantly built up by the estimable Tim How. And now you can carry away six bottles rather than a full case after a hard day at the office.

The other is Dunelm, which won the General/Home Retailers Sector. This company is an amazing success story. It was founded in the late 70s and only listed 3 years ago. By concentrating on thrifty customers after good value for money, it has quietly gone about toppling previous Most Admired giants such as Kingfisher and Argos. Run by Will Adderley, the son of the founders, it is based in Leicester and is now aiming for 150 stores.

Incidentally, this year's bottom ten included (alongside the likes of ITV, Enterprise Inns and Sports Direct) Bank of Ireland, Aer Lingus and Allied Irish Bank. It's clearly been a rotten year for reputations on the other side of the Irish sea…