The crud, the bland and the fallen Madonna

As weird as it sounds, there’s something ever so slightly reassuring about the Brit Awards being shit.

They’re consistent – you know where you stand with the Brits. You go in expecting to be disappointed by the overwhelming blandness of such a relentlessly corporate affair and those expectations are always met. And anyway, we’d only have to find something else to complain about if this changed.

Last year, I made a point of not watching the Brits (explaining why here), but for 2015’s awards I decided to bite the bullet and subject myself to just over two hours of musical diarrhoea, vomit-inducing sycophancy and veteran pop singers hitting the floor at considerable speed, recording my thoughts in the process.

Don’t say you weren’t warned…

8pm – proceedings kick off with a frankly bizarre but mercifully brief ‘dance’ routine involving a banquet which feels like it’s on the verge of erupting into the kind of party where car keys are pulled from bowls. Nothing quite says ‘the best of British music’ like dour-faced celebrity chef Marco Pierre White, does it? And that’s probably why he was chosen to put an end to this utterly pointless routine by lifting the lid on a giant silver serving plate to reveal our cheeky, chirpy hosts for this evening’s ‘merriment’… yup, Ant and Dec. Hey, at least it’s not James Corden again.

8.05pm – if Taylor Swift’s opening performance excels at anything, it’s being lacklustre. She looks and sounds like she’s there because she has to be. ‘Blank Space’? I’ll say.

8.09pm – Dec warns us that Kanye West is in the building. I think it’s going to be one of those nights where I’d happily see him ruin anyone’s acceptance speech. Fingers crossed for Sheeran or Smith, eh?

8.11pm – first painfully predictable award of the night goes to Ed Sheeran for Best British Male Solo Artist. Presented by Orlando Bloom and Rita Ora (looking like a deflated Brigitte Nielsen), Sheeran steps up to receive something resembling an ornament from your grandma’s downstairs toilet. Kanye nowhere to be seen, but the night is young.

8.20pm - “Are you having a great time? I know I am," says Jimmy Page without so much as a hint of enthusiasm in his voice as he prepares to present the award for Best British Group to Royal Blood. The Twittersphere is awash with furious One Direction fans who, like, totally, literally, cannot BELIEVE an award has gone to someone they’ve never heard of.

8.23pm – we’re ‘treated’ to a live performance by whimpering robot Sam Smith. Maybe I’m missing something here, but how can someone marketed as a supposed soul singer make music that is so devoid of any actual soul? Mute button.

8.36pm – Excruciating effort at ‘humour’ between Lewis Hamilton and Ellie Goulding (admittedly neither are renowned for their razor-sharp wit and comic timing, but still…) as they shuffle on stage looking like the happy couple at a second-rate footballer’s wedding to present the Best International Female toilet decoration to Taylor Swift, who promptly dedicates it to tea and all things British.

8.40pm – Royal Blood perform live, presumably fuelled by the bitter, stinging tears of livid One Directioners. I like to think that future Royal Blood riders will include, nay, DEMAND barrels of the stuff.

8.51pm – Simon Cowell’s mouth botox doesn’t appear to have worn off yet. Either that or he’s just pissed. Either way, tonight he looks less like a music impresario and more like an inebriated English teacher sitting out a dance at the school prom.

8.56pm – a busker seems to have wandered on stage while no one’s looking. Oh, wait – it’s Ed Sheeran, comin’ on like a Games Workshop Justin Timberlake. At one point, he looks like he’s actually trying to put his guitar out of its misery. I wish I was that guitar.

9.11pm – “Everyone has to get up on their feet and welcome my husband, Kanye West!” shouts professional oxygen thief Kim Kardashian before His Lordship takes to the stage with what appears to be the entire population of a small town (I assume for protection in case Beck decides to crash the party) for a performance which TV bosses keep muting, despite it being shown after the watershed. Is this the most pointless television performance ever? To be fair, I’d probably still be asking that question even if it wasn’t being muted.

9.16pm – for some inexplicable reason, Zac Efron in drag comes on to present the award for Best International Male Solo Artist. Oh no, wait, it’s Cara Delevingne. Winner Pharrell Williams can’t be arsed to turn up so he sends a video in which he says “Best International Solo Artist? I don’t know…” – which, funnily enough, is exactly what I was thinking.

9.26pm – Ant and Dec do the sort of ‘comedy’ routine they’d have done when they still did kids’ TV and which even the Chuckle Brothers would now dismiss as ‘dated’. I’m rapidly starting to lose interest and a live performance by Take That (now just a three-piece following Jason Orange’s departure to focus on… oh, fuck knows) fails to reverse the situation. I’ve forgotten the song already and they haven’t finished performing it yet.

9.40pm – identikit busker-done-good George Ezra tries to liven up a predictably dull performance by giving full-blown hipsters jobs in his backing band. As charitable as that may be, the whole thing just feels flat and lifeless. He’s performed ‘Budapest’ so many times that even he sounds bored of it now.

9.50pm – award number two (in every sense) for Sam Smith as he wins British Breakthrough Act. Just to rub salt into the wound, someone’s seen fit to ask Fearne Cotton to present the award. Kanye, where are you? Bring the flamethrower.

9.56pm – “British music is the best, isn’t it?” yelps an over-excited Ant. Indeed. Maybe we should have an awards ceremony recognising the best of British music. I can’t think of anything more exciting.

9.58pm – Wand Erection finally win an award for Best British Video and they haven’t even turned up to collect it. An increasingly dishevelled looking Cowell accepts it in their place. To be fair, he’s the only one who’s actually had any input into their career to date so he may as well have their award too. I still want to smash my face into the nearest wall, however.

10.06pm – Russell Crowe presents what we are promised is the final award of the night, for Best British Album. It’s fucking Ed Sheeran again. Crowe shakes his hand like a headteacher congratulating his star pupil on winning the school science prize. Sheeran ponders flogging his award because “it’s a Tracey Emin, innit?” You might get some money for that guitar too. Just a thought.

10.11pm – it’s a sad indictment on the Brits that the most interesting thing about the whole sorry affair is Madonna falling off the stage with a not inconsiderable thump, inadvertently creating what will no doubt be the defining moment of this year’s awards. To be fair, she dusts herself off and carries on but as comebacks go… ouch.

2014: that was the year that wasn't (part two)

As promised, here's part two of my look back at people who really got my goat in 2014. 

You'll note that this list, when added to the ones in yesterday's post, only adds up to nine. Well, I never said it was a top 10, did I?

Anyway, you're wasting precious reading time, so dig in...

U2

“The musical equivalent of someone pissing through your letterbox” was my view in an earlier blog on Bono and co’s ‘generous’ decision to violate every iTunes user’s account with their latest offering.

That’s 500 MILLION PEOPLE waking up one morning to find a steaming great turd in their online music library.

Had it been anyone else (and I really mean ANYONE else) then we might have been quietly pleased with this unexpected freebie – and if not, we would have rolled our eyes, shrugged and deleted it. No harm done, eh?

Somehow, the moment Lord Bono and his band of creatively bankrupt cronies get involved, it all becomes some sort of sick stunt whereby we’re all supposed to feel grateful that they’ve deemed us worthy to receive their precious music for nothing.

Turns out it was so unpopular that Apple had to hastily release a tool allowing any sane person to delete this musical atrocity without further ado.

What’s even more puzzling, however, is that the album in question, Songs of Innocence, was then released properly and people actually went out and bought it – y’know, handed over money and everything.

This planet, eh?

Ed Sheeran

Aside from the fact he looks like he should be excitedly spending his birthday money in Games Workshop (Maccy D’s on the way home if he behaves), Sheeran is responsible for music so offensively bland that you begin to question whether or not those ears you were blessed with are actually a punishment for something you did in a past life.

Now this clump of ginger pubic hair stuck to a guitar has apparently reinvented himself as some sort of sixth-form Justin Timberlake, trying to be all sexy and stuff, despite having all the appeal of a discarded kebab slowly congealing on a wall.

He’s bloody everywhere too. The Top 40 seems to be riddled with his outpourings and he’s even released a calendar, complete with a front cover photo showing Sheeran looking like his mother’s just walked in on him without knocking.

And it’s all your fault: you keep buying his music so he keeps on making more. 

TOWIE/Made In Chelsea/Geordie Shore (and anything else of that ilk)

I tried watching TOWIE once and ended up changing the channel out of boredom and frustration. 

Boredom at the flat, monotone delivery of the show’s dead-eyed ‘stars’ and frustration that anyone thought this was a good idea in the first place.

For those unfamiliar with these so-called ‘reality drama’ or ‘scripted reality’ programmes (and I envy you, frankly), they basically follow this formula: group of spoilt, egotistical wankers attend parties, have tempestuous relationships with each other and then sit around discussing their empty lives in deadpan voices that are devoid of any emotion, any SOUL, whatsoever. Seriously, they have all the dramatic delivery of a six-year-old in a nativity play (and most likely the reading age, too).

This is then packaged as being ‘real life’ on the basis that the producers have ‘engineered’ a few scenarios to make things a little more ‘interesting’. Sometimes, cast members are written out of this so-called ‘reality’ show, which presumably means the producers have somehow banned them from ever seeing their friends again.

For me, these programmes are the epitome of a society which celebrates stupidity. Take Joey Essex, for example. He probably forgets to pull his trousers down before sitting on the toilet and yet he’s been given his own TV show and has even released his own compilation album, presumably because the suits in the board room know there are enough dullards out there who will buy it purely for his varnished face starring vacantly from the cover like a sad monkey.

The idiots are winning.

Nigel Farage

Okay, he’s an easy target, but he’s also a worthy target. I’ve got nothing against a politician trying to market himself as a ‘man of the people’, pint in hand, smouldering nub end nestled between his slimy fingers.

What I do have a problem with, however, is when that politician is leader of a party whose members seem to be in competition to see who can come out with the most bigoted, ill-informed (and most likely racist or homophobic) statement possible and he just shrugs it off as banter.

Most recently, the Muppet-mouthed fuckwit went on LBC Radio to defend disgraced former UKIP member Kerry Smith’s use of the word ‘chinky’ on the grounds that many people use this word when deciding to order a Chinese takeaway. What next? Defending the P-word because we’ve all lived near a convenience store run by people of Asian origin?

This is the man who fancies himself as the saviour of the United Kingdom. Saving us from what exactly? Tolerance? Culture-enriching diversity? Basic human rights?

It speaks volumes that UKIP members are now being against having a Twitter account, just in case they decide to get all Prince Philip on anyone who appears to be a bit ‘different’. Farage himself recently appeared to suggest that immigrants were to blame for congestion on the M4 which delayed his arrival at a ‘meet the leader’ event. I can only assume that he used the time sitting in traffic to go from car to car, conducting a survey of everyone’s country of origin, before making such a well thought-out comment.

Barely a day goes by where a UKIP member doesn’t say something which belongs in a children’s book from the 1940s and Farage will continue to sit there grinning like a moron because he knows there’s a good chance people will actually vote for his party of former Tories as a protest against people who are still Tories.

I’ll leave you with the words of comedian Stewart Lee: “A lot of people are saying they’re going to vote UKIP as a protest vote, which I sort of understand, but when we were young, as a protest vote you’d vote for someone nice who might not get in, like the Greens, or some funny, silly, amusing party like the Monster Raving Loony Party, or the Liberal Democrats. But people have been voting for UKIP as a protest vote, and they’re nasty and they might get in. I mean, what kind of protest is that? That’s like shitting your hotel bed as a protest against bad service, then realising you’ve now got to sleep in a shitted bed.”