I am really the last person in the world who should have presented an achievement award to Adrian Mizzi for his 20 years building up Malta's fashion awards.

After all, when I went to the first edition at the Dolmen Hotel I had been scathing about it in my then-regular Times of Malta column Cutting Edge (see below).

I wondered whether his staff knew that, when they asked me if I would go to the ceremony. Not only did they know, as it turned out, but it was actually the reason I was chosen to present it.

It’s a funny thing. People are in general fairly terrible at taking criticism, and the Maltese are particularly terrible. And yet Adrian did not scoff at my write-up, brand me ignorant and ignore the whole thing.

He was upset by it (I had warned him to brace himself), no doubt about it. But he did something that should serve as a real lesson to many others: he re-read it and accepted that he needed to try harder.

It was not easy for him, 20 years ago. A completely new idea, for an industry that had not yet made a name for itself in spite of the obvious talent. No money, no sponsors. My article was a warning that if he settled for mediocrity, the awards would languish and never achieve what they were hoping to: raising the profile of the sector.

It is not easy to accept criticism, but it is so much harder to fight the greedy clutching arms of mediocrity

His staff told me that he often referred to my article over the years, as a reminder to them all that they should strive for professionalism. Backstage, his wife clutched my hand and thanked me for coming along. Once he saw me on stage, Adrian also shook his head, and we hugged each other. I was not the enemy – but had actually become part of his journey.

For years, he has contacted me every few years, asking me to go to the awards to see how far they had come from that inauspicious beginning. I had become, it seems, a sort of reference point for him, like the teacher who once told you that you would amount to nothing, the football coach that told you that you had two left feet.

It is not easy to accept criticism, but it is so much harder to fight the greedy clutching arms of mediocrity. Almost all the points I had made in Cutting Edge have been taken on board, and he has turned the event into something truly marvellous.

In these days of instant and ubiquitous social media reactions, mediocrity would not stand a chance and the awards would have been tweeted out of existence. In those pre-internet days, what he did was quite rare: if only others would learn a lesson from that ambitious young man, as he then was, and strive to be better and not just good enough, no matter how many excuses we have.

That is why I accepted to present the award. I happily eat my words, Adrian.