After being cast on the spot by director Jerry Mitchell in the musical Legally Blonde Sheridan Smith received the award for Best Actress in a Musical.

Last night Smith received the award in London’s theatre at Drury Lane after a disappointing time three years ago when she left without a bronze statuette Sheridan was ecstatic to receive the award.

Smith said: “The girls in my category you are amazing,”

 ”I don’t think I deserve to be here. I know you all want to get to the afterparty and get hammered. I had the best 14 months. This is the perfectly baked cake.”

After receiving her award, she said: “I’m a complete chav, a complete scrubber from Donny. I’m just blagging it.”

Boasting the biggest Oliviers yet, last night’s organisers included a surprise performance from Barry Manilow, Angela Lansbury and 360 dancing students in a dramatic finale.

However, the biggest surprise of the night came from an opera that first performed to 35 people in a pub who beat international opera companies to take home the award for best new opera

OperaUpClose’s production of La Bohème, which first showed a couple of years ago in The Cock Tavern, north London, fought off competition from the 2,200-seat Royal Opera House.

“If you’d have told us we would even be in the audience of this a year ago we wouldn’t have believed you,” said the opera’s director Robin Norton-Hale. “To have gone from a 35-pub theatre to winning this.”