Shouting at the Telly: The BRIT Awards (ITV)

Award season is in full swing and last night we saw the music industry slapping itself (in rhythm) on its back at the BRITs. Like the NTAs (see review here) the BRITs wasn't ways the arena-filling showcase that it is now. The first occasion when the British music industry decided that huge profits, gold discs, public adoration, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll wasn’t enough for their darlings and they needed an end of term prize for their efforts, was in 1977 as part of the Queen's Jubilee. It was snappily called “The BRITish Record Industry BRITannia Awards”. The awards were such a roaring success that they didn’t bother having another ceremony until 1982. In 1977 it was presented by Michael Aspel and broadcast on ITV. In 1982 it was presented by David Jacobs and wasn’t even broadcast (they really, as Ant and Dec would say, “upped their game”. More on them later).

The first time we mortals got to see how useless our music heroes were at acceptance speeches (a trait that lives on today) was in 1985 when the BBC began broadcasting the awards ceremony. In those days it was more like the Variety Club Awards i.e. it was presented by Noel Edmonds, everyone wore tuxedos, it came from the Grosvenor House Hotel and it was all done and dusted in an hour. That year Prince won two awards and accepted them by mumbling nonsensically. I also vividly remember an Australian man coming on in a baseball cap with a dog to hand over the lifetime achievement award (which I’m sure even in 1985 went to Annie Lennox) and tell everyone that "you've all done very well" a bit like young Mr Grace in Are You Being Served. Hold on a mo.....yep just googled it...it’s not my age, I did remember it (sort of) correctly. The chap was Maurice Oberstein and he was the chair of the BPI. He was American and the award went to the Police. You can watch it here). Glad we got that sorted out.

The award itself in those days looked like a CD (which had only been launched a couple of years previously). It was then changed into dancing musical notes, then the back of a 50 pence piece and eventually became like an Oscar™ (NB: for copyright reasons can I say that any comparisons between a BRIT award and an Oscar ™ is purely coincidental and is probably more to do with the fact that Britannia Music Club took over sponsorship of the awards the same year). If you want to see the full collection then go to Annie Lennox’s website here (I told you she had won a lot).

The award ceremony then got bigger, bolder, better, then worse, then really worse, then recorded, then live again, then bigger and finally big and quite good. So that brings us up-to-date with last night's show. It was hosted (for the last time) by Ant and Dec (ITV’s Noel Edmonds) wearing tuxedos and looking slightly out of place. Now I love Ant and Dec. I think they peaked on SM:TV with Cat Deeley at the turn of the century but they are brilliant at presenting live TV. But somehow this isn't their best gig. They looked like 1970’s comedians and some of their material was reminiscent of that time period as well. The BRITs has tried a whole range of presenters over the years (everyone remembers Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood for being awful; some remember James Corden for being good; no one remembers Cathy McGowan from the 1990 show) and the search is on again for new presenters for next year.

The night began with an opening reminiscent of the 2012 Olympic games with lots of statuesque ladies becoming living BRIT statues (if on Sunday the Oscars™ do something similar with beefy men covered in gold then I reckon that’s one all on the copyright infringement front). Then Coldplay came on and were, well, Coldplay. I know Coldplay are Marmite, but at events like these, they are a safe pair of hands to open. Then the awards started and pattern was set for the rest of the evening:

When giving an award 2 people who struggled to read the autocue always did it.
With the stage being circular and the venue being so big, the winner never knew which way to look, so just looked all around which left the TV director playing a game of cat and mouse trying to catch them actually looking at a camera.
Adele came on and accepted every other award and occasionally swore, which was the most rock’n’roll thing that happened all evening.

The performances are really now the talking points of the BRITs and over the two and a half hours we were treated to:

Justin Bieber singing around a campfire with James Bay, then all hell being let loose as

someone obviously hadn’t risk assessed the activity properly and before you could say “viral video” the whole stage was alight with fire and little Justin was joined by a troupe of dancers in a scene reminiscent of the film
The Wicker Man.
Singers instructing the crowd to “make some noise” which seemed counterintuitive to me. These people have paid big bucks to hear you sing and you tell them to try and drown you out. Perhaps that says something about the quality of their singing.
Rihanna appeared to be wearing the legs from Sesame Street’s Big Bird and was joined on

stage by Drake (ah, perhaps that’s why she was going for the bird theme) and performed her new single Work. The audience loved it (well they were probably just glad she turned up), but I was left still trying to locate the melody.
Jess Glynne’s hair appeared to be channelling Crystal Tipps (from Crystal Tipps and Alistair. If you are under 40 click here) and occasionally forgot to open her mouth but carried on singing.
Which brings us to Little Mix. Obviously one of them had popped down the ASDA yesterday

and picked up Spectre on DVD as their set seemed heavily influenced by the “Day of the Dead” opening to the film. They strutted around inbetween skulls, tapping their canes, wearing their big Bridget Jones pants in a voodoo-meets- pop mash-up singing and dancing. Well dancing all the time, but apparently only singing the verses as we only appeared to be hearing the backing track during the chorus. I assume this was a technical glitch as I have a soft spot for Little Mix and judging by YouTube clips they can actually can sing live.