Was discussing anti virus software with my girlfriend's dad, who hasn't got any installed on his network. I told him the best place to learn which programs were the best were on the virus bulletin awards and told him from memory eset was significantly the best rated one, as it got the award nearly every time. He said programs like that along with norton, probably wrote most of the viruses themselves, and so thats why they scooped the award because it was one of their written ones. apparently norton had been found guilty of this some time ago. They write their own viruses, to keep themselves in business.

Is their any truth in what he said? or is it just rumor?

If there was any truth in this, these companies would have been out of business long time ago.

Getting those bulletin awards is nothing special though.
They get a prescribed amount of pre-defined viruses/virii to find, not a boatload of unknown stuff. Anybody can modify their program to at least find all the 'required' ones for the test. It's how fast and efficient they do it, without putting unnecessary stress on the PC. And you don't need a pretty interface, that is a waste of resources.
A very basic, but extremely powerful AV can be found here: http://www.extendia.com/eXtendiaAntiVirusPro.htm (it's what I use).

An example of very poor implementation is Norton/Symantec. This is such bloatware crap, that any normal PC gets forced into it's knees. It causes so many problems, just read this forum (and the Windows OS). Admittedly, once it is installed and does NOT give any hassle, it does the job, but very much at the expense of computing power.