Brits alright

XRRF began their Brit Awards coverage by noting how backdated it was to be still using a blog, rather than Twitter. Thanks to being away from the internet all week I have that beaten and will present my notes taken on actual paper as I was watching it, even longer afterwards than I expected!

As a result you have to take it on faith that my many successful predictions are due to the predictability of the whole thing rather than any cheating.

Johnny Vegas voiceover is not really a good start, and ona first glance at the stage (grass, tent) it might not even be immediately obvious what was supposed to be happening to anyone who didn't read about the Glastonbury theme.

U2 are up first playing their new single, and waste no time in putting up the Union Jack imagery. Don't they get put up for Best International rather than British? Ah, they do an Irish flag too. I think. Or Italian.

You'd think that to celebrate and show off the best of British music we could easily manage better than "Put On Your Boots" Especially once it gets to the 'you don't know...' bit that sounds like inferior Muse. U2 make this all look totally routine and dull for them, and they haven't even put the album out yet.

The spoken bit is even worse, and if I wrote words like that I sure would not want them printed metres high behind me. Speaking of terrible lyrics, they've now switched to sounding like 2008 vintage The Verve. It's got to be all uphill from here, right?

Our host Kylie comes out for a short bit of "Can't Get You Out of My Head". It's weird that someone already so big can still have come to be defined so much by one song. There's some cheap laughs gained by the fatness of one of the dancers dressed in the red, face-visored costumes of the video. That's one of our other hosts, of course. I would definitely not be able to pick Mathew Horne out of a lineup, although I might manage James Corden.

Now Kylie is speaking she sounds very regal, although it's not long before the first autocue slip-up. The first joke is at the expense of Ting Tings for not being too world-renowned, which is a bit awkward. There are much better targets among the shortlists, for a start.

Simon Pegg is on. 'Pop - I know I love it' he says and it will be surprising if anyone manages to sound less convincing tonight. Our first award is best British Female. As they read out the nominees there's a big cheer for M.I.A. but nothing compared to our obvious winner Duffy. Then there's Beth Rowley, who I have only just realised is not the same thing as Beth Orton.

Best British Female - Duffy

Duffy sounds very unsurprised and almost as unimpressed. She knows she'll be back later.

Stage banter has already been reduced to just shouting at Kylie. They try to make jokes based on Lionel Richie song titles before he comes on, but it seems lost on much of the audience. Best International Female next. Santigold is still read out as Santogold for now. Less obvious one, this, apart from that Gabrielle Cilmi will not be winning - Pink?

Best International Female - Katy Perry

Oh. It's been long enough that "Hot and Cold" has been her representation on radio now that its mindlessly enjoyable chorus has taken hold and it's almost possible to forget how completely terrible a thing she is, but it comes back. Her first words get blocked off. Ooh, contraversial. She's sounding almost as ill as she says she is, and not even trying to pretend that she isn't only there because she knew she'd win.

Girls Aloud are the next performance and their staging looks more impressive than U2's right away. The giant feather aided stripper version of 'The Promise" is not quite working though. The impression that they could technically be naked behind those lasts about 3 lines before someone moves it wrong, and the feathers just get in the way for the entire rest of the song. It doesn't matter anyway because they're national treasures now - weird how it's happened a good three years after their best album by far, but there we go. Nicola sings and inevitably gets panned away from just before 'are you watching me baby?', heh.

Oh, we can't go the whole show without Fearne Cotton and her interviewing technique carefully honed on eight year olds, yay. She spends a remarkably long time detailing how the public can vote for an award without ever mentioning which one it is. It's Best British Single.

Interesting and a bit pleasing to see an iPhone advert with last.fm during the break, although the fact that even that is also plugging Kings of Leon is a bit depressing.

Alex James is now not a man of music, but of cheese apparently. And awkward speech rythyms. He's introducing Best British Breakthrough. It's difficult to care about anything apart from Scouting for Girls not winning, here. It will be Duffy though, probably.

Best British Breakthrough - Duffy

'This time last year she was playing a tiny club in Piccadilly' says the voiceover. She also already had a number one single. Try a bit harder, please. Her speech still sounds unimpressed, but she's charming and (a bit) less bland than her music.

Coldplay playing "Viva La Vida" next, and even for the Brits they don't have live strings and just have them miming them on a TV screen, which was funny half a year ago the first time but is not exactly lending a sense of occasion. This is almost as routine as U2 were. Guy Garvey doesn't look impressed. That's Guy Garvey, on ITV!

Haha, they have Jamies Oliver and Cullum presenting the next award. Almost as if they're setting out to make the easiest combined target possible. The public have now narrowed Best British Single down to five songs, and somehow have still included Leona Lewis' fourth best single.

More adverts, with Mastercard's miming sponsor things already repeating themselves. Poor effort. I'm not paying much attention to the ads and briefly think ITV are launching a programme called 'Celebrity Jews'. It's Juice.

Best International Group. Do we even need to bother with a shortlist? It's going to be Kings of Leon.

Best International Group - Kings of Leon

They will beat the exact same set of bands (MGMT, Fleet Foxes etc.) to win the album award too, presumably. We're being told again by the voiceover that the Brits are renowned for outrageous behaviour and surprises. They weren't thinking of Kings of Leon's super boring acceptance speech there.

A dig at Craig David's '6 nominations no Brits for CD!' is somehow still slightly amusing even after all these years, especially with placement next to the Best British Male award. And then you see the shortlist and realise that Ian Brown is up for it. And The Streets. Dizzee and Wiley still not acceptable? James Morrison to win, maybe.

Best British Male - Paul Weller

Oh. This is better than Annie Lennox every year how?

Next performance and unlike Coldplay, Duffy has real strings! And real music! Still boring.

Is Kings of Leon and Take That really that 'unlikely' a 'juxtaposition' as we're told?

Best International Album - Kings of Leon

How pointless. Mind you, British Group usually goes the same way. At least the acceptance speech is unintentionally more interesting as they go on and on in blissful ignorance about how they have to give this to 'England'. Just after having the award presented by notably not English
Joe Calzaghe too. Weren't the name of the awards a clue?

Take That perform next, and their hovering UFO staging and mid-transformation Superman costumes are a lot more impressive than the song. Which is still basically "Nature's Law" by Embrace. At least they look like they might be enjoying themselves.

Next award is Best British Live Act, as voted for by Radio 2 listeners. Taking that into consideration you'd think Coldplay would be a shoe-in and with Elbow as outsiders, but the fact that the vote likely had an internet aspect suggests that Iron Maiden's more dedicated fans might win over.

Best British Live Act - Iron Maiden

There we go. A video acceptance speech but they manage to at least stick something in the memory as they get vapourised by their mascot at the end, which is more than Weller could do.

Speaking of the internet, it's David Hasselhoff to present Best British Group. He (or whoever wrote the speech) is trying way too hard to sound profound. The 'surreal diversity' of British music is mentioned for a shortlist containing Radiohead, Coldplay and Elbow. Take That and Girls Aloud complete by far the best lineup so far. Take That to win?

Best British Group - Elbow

Oh my. A rare moment of joy has to be fucked up though, so the voiceover tells us that 'quality music does finally get recognised, even if it takes ten years', which rankles like anything when there was no reason not to recognise them before, and the awards committee still wouldn't have the balls to recognise them now if no one else had first. Chris Martin looks either happy or very well practised on his reaction shot. 'I can't believe how long it's taken us to get this close to the Hoff' begins Guy Garvey, although the speech doesn't really go anywhere too much from there.

Next performance is Kings of Leon doing "Use Somebody". Ever since the opening of this was used on the adverts for some MTV reality show that's all I can think of when I hear the song, it seems so appropriately vapid somehow. If they'd at least performed "Sex on Fire" I might have something half positive to say.

Hasselhoff is now creeping all over Fearne Cotton. Ewww. She tries to ask Elbow some questions but they are clearly not really listening.

The hosts joking at Craig David's expense a second time is not funny at all and just needlessly mean spirited.

Next award is a predecided one:

Critics' Choice Award - Florence & the Machine

Now, despite really liking Little Boots, Thecocknbullkid and Polly Scattergood, and even Micachu for the space of at least one song, I find myself completely unable to get behind Florence here. Even so, if she's meant to be so exciting why not give her the chance to come on and do a whole song? Someone else who doesn't look like this is just another show on a long list would be great.

Best International Male does not have the most impressive lineup, and must surely go to Kanye?

Best International Male - Kanye West

He's not here, of course. His first line is 'We know Barack is best interracial male'.

We now have a unique and exciting collaboration between The Ting Tings and Estelle! Which amounts to them getting to do a very short bit of "Shut Up and Let Me Go" before she does half of "American Boy" while they desparately try and find things to do in the background and Tempest 2000 is projected on the screens. There's then an excruciatingly awkward transition into "That's Not My Name" where the presence of all three finally makes a litte sense as it takes three competing voices to do the song's finale justice.

I finally realise that one of the reasons that I am beginning to dislike Mathew Horne so is that, especially in his awful blazer, he looks just like Ray Quinn.

Best British Single to be announced next. A "Mercy" win and Duffy clean sweep looks inevitable.

Best British Single - Girls Aloud, "The Promise"

Maybe not! The voiceover actually calls them 'national treasures'. Haha. I knew that they hadn't won anything recently, but didn't realise that this was their first ever Brit! Sarah is justified in shouting 'It's about time!'.

Last of the not already known awards is Best British Album. This surely can't be Elbow too and will be heading to Duffy. The fact that they have Tom Jones presenting makes that all the more obvious.

Best British Album - Duffy, Rockferry

Yep. Really difficult to care too much about this either way. She finally does actually look emotional though - maybe they only told her about the other two? She also doesn't make much sense at all. Voiceover mentions that The Darkness won three awards too at this point, although not that they had the whole finale turned over to them as the most exciting thing to hit music ever.

Only thing left is lifetime achievement to Pet Shop Boys, for which Brandon Flowers gives a surprisingly good speech which suggests that he is actually a fan and did actually read and think about what he was saying even if he didn't write it all.


My notes run out at this point as there was finally something more enjoyable to watch than to snark about. So, take it away Neil and Chris...