A YOUNG film-maker from Gorleston has won two prestigious Royal Television Society awards.Tom Mallion, 21, won the awards for his film FlashMob: The Story Behind the Madness.

A YOUNG film-maker from Gorleston has won two prestigious Royal Television Society awards.

Tom Mallion, 21, won the awards for his film FlashMob: The Story Behind the Madness. The 30-minute DVD film tries to get behind the phenomenon of flash mobbing, in which large groups of people perform wacky stunts in public places.

Tom's �200 film saw him and two other Lincoln University media students set up a flash mob event through the internet in Lincoln town centre. It is presented by Jack Jay of Yarmouth's Hippodrome.

About 70 people can be seen in the film madly dancing to Queen's We Will Rock You and the Village People's YMCA.

Last week, Tom and fellow Lincoln University media students, Adam Stubbings and Rick Horsfall, won best student factual entertainment and best overall student production at the society's Midland regional award ceremony in Birmingham. The ceremony was jointly hosted by former Gorleston resident Myleene Klass.

To help understand the mad world of flash mobbing, Mr Mallion, who graduated with a first in media production in the summer, spoke to advertising guru Ed Sayers of Saatchi and Saatchi.

During the summer a flash mob took place in Yarmouth around the “puppet man” but Tom was inspired by the T-Mobile TV and cinema advert where hundreds of people turned up at the main concourse of Liverpool Street station and began dancing. He found and interviewed the director of the piece, Ed Sayers, at the advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, and they then set about re-creating a flashmob in Lincoln High Street, although they only gave themselves two weeks to achieve it.

In the event over 80 people turned up and Tom's group, calling themselves Trademark Productions, used eight cameras to capture what happened.

The resulting film is a mixture of documentary and “Challenge Anneka” as the tension mounts to see if they can pull it off. Central to the success of the project and the DVD is Jack Jay, of the Hippodrome, who was the front man for the film.

Jack and Tom have been friends since they were at school together at Cliff Park High, and Tom has been a lighting operator at the circus for several seasons.

Flashmob will now go on to the national RTS awards in London next year.

The team were congratulated backstage by the My Family and West End stage star Robert Lindsay who received a lifetime achievement award at the same ceremony.