There wasn’t much on the telly last night so we settled into the 2008 Brit Awards, which actually turned out to be deadly entertainment. The musical highlight of the show was undoubtedly Rihanna singing “Umbrella” against the Klaxons’ “Golden Skans” (above), which worked out bloody well if you ask me. Definitely a case of one plus one equalling five if ever there was one.
But the music didn’t really feature in the entertainment vomit bag that majestically exploded on stage shortly after the Osbournes were announced as hosts for the evening. Who gets those idiots to present any kind of live show at all? The kids more or less held the family act together: Sharon was all over the place, enthusiastically voicing her desire to “lick” or grab the “ding dongs” of pretty much everything with a deep voice that wandered into the proximity of the stage, and Ozzy couldn’t even handle his monkey-job of finishing off the others’ sentences by announcing the next presenters/acts. When he was finally given more than just a name to say, he fucked that up by loudly introducing “Mister Sir Paul McCartney” at the wrong time. Way to go.
That’s not even the half of it. Radio One’s Chris Moyles had his opening gag fall flat, leaving him in a bit of a daze for the rest of his bit; the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, accepting the award for Best International Group via satellite, sarcastically explained how proud he was to be grouped with past winners of the award, which include the likes of “Lisa Loeb” and “especially Kula Shaker”. ROTFLMAO. Hysterical.
The pièce de résistance, however, was comedian Vic Reeves, who majestically pulled out of the punchline to a decidedly foul-tasting quip about Kylie Minogue and cancer, leaving him clearly panicked at the sudden prospect of his career sloshing down the bogs faster than Michael Richards can say the N-word. Thankfully, Shazza (herself a cancer survivor) wouldn’t let him say much else – she cut him off, repeatedly calling him a “pisshead”, and snatched his announcer’s card away from him so that she could introduce the next winners, the Arctic Monkeys. Poor old Vic Reeves.
Wait. It hasn’t finished. We were crying with laughter at this point. The Arctic Monkeys had already won an award, but they were so hammered when they had previously stumbled up on stage that they only managed to get about two words out between four of them in three minutes. Imagine our delight when they were chucked into the Royal Rumble of embarrassment being battled out on international television. It was a fucking free-for-all. They wandered up again and slurred their way through a heap of nonsense while Shazza and Vic slugged it out behind them, before the producer had the good sense to cut them off and zip away to a backstage presenter. Priceless. You can’t buy entertainment like that! And here’s hoping that sponsors MasterCard can see the funny side to the debacle.
Oh, I’m still amused. If it’s screened again wherever you are, the show is well worth watching. Even if it’s just to see Amy Winehouse going epileptic on her mike and having a pretty intense moment with her convict husband through the camera at one point. Incidentally, Blake Fielder-Civil, who is in prison for perverting the course of justice, overdosed on heroin the other day with some of his cell-mates. He paid for the heroin with signed pictures of his wife. Awesome. When is this going to be turned into a soap opera? I’m hooked already.