Sports Personality of the Year LIVE: Winners revealed as Mary Earps and Manchester City claim top prizes

Voting has not opened yet, Lineker informs us - we must hear from the six contenders first.

Gabby Logan’s microphone has stopped working, which isn’t ideal. Quick, to a video package - and a look at the World Para Athletics and Athletics Championships from earlier this year.

Tong also has the introduction honours, bringing out Alex Scott and Clare Balding, and then Gary Lineker and Gabby Logan, the fab four of the Beeb’s broadcasting stable.

Scott thanks Tong and Jules Buckley for getting the party started. Logan is “delighted” to be joined by so many former winners. Lineker is excited to hand out so many special awards. And Balding leads us in to the nominees for the main award.

And, as promised, it’s another montage - we relive the contenders’ respective sporting feats.

Ah, it’s DJ Pete Tong and an orchestra to kick things off, providing the soundtrack to the first montage of the night. It won’t be the last.

The floodlights are on at the BBC’s dockside Salford base. Gary Lineker, Alex Scott, Clare Balding and Gabby Logan welcome us along. Christopher Chataway was the first winner of the Sports Personality of the Year award, if you were wondering - Roger Bannister’s pacemaker squeezed out the four-minute-miler himself back in 1954.

Righty ho. We aren’t far away at all from it all kicking off at MediaCity. Two hours of talking heads, memories of 2023 and fancily-clad sportspeople await.

Not every worthy contender made the shortlist, of course, with Josh Kerr highlighted by many as a notable omission from our group in the running for the main award. He’s vowed to use the snub to drive him in an Olympic year.

It’s not just British athletes that will honoured tonight - no, that would be much too parochial. The World Sport Star of the Year is, obviously, one of the most fiercely contested, with the relative merits of the top sportspeople on Earth tough to compare. Still, a panel has managed to whittle it down to six. Crossing their fingers (maybe) will be...

Simone Biles

Erling Haaland

Siya Kolisi

Aitana Bonmati

Novak Djokovic

Max Verstappen

And Stuart Broad is also in Salford, joined on the red carpet by Mollie King, the former Saturday and his fiancée.

One of the reasons that the awards were moved from their traditional weekend slot to a weekday evening was a hope of the organisers to get more sporting stars along. There will be plenty of famous faces in, and a couple of our contenders have already graced the red carpet, including Mary Earps.

Sir Kenny Dalglish will be honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2023.

Dalglish, who scored 167 times in 320 appearances, lifting nine trophies for Celtic before he moved to Liverpool for a British record transfer fee at the time of £440,000, will be handed the award on Tuesday.

Dalglish would go on to become a Liverpool great and helped the club retain the European Cup against Club Brugge at Wembley in 1978 by scoring the only goal of the game.