20.01 - Oh look it is a gay, a balloon and a big spider. Hello Mika, hello Brits 2008.
A bit of coolness is wrestled back when Beth Ditto pops up for a duet, but to those who are not wearing their glasses (because they dropped them behind the sofa) it looks like a runner bean duetting with one of those Marks and Spencer gummy pig sweets.
Wow Kelly Osborne looks like a goth Lisa Stansfield, Jack looks like one of those bikers who cook things on telly and Ozzy and Sharon just look the same as they have for the last ten years
20.07 - First joke to fall flat, courtesy of Chris Moyles. A nation is unsuprised.
Take That trounce all those poxy instrument playing bands like Muse and Arctic Monkeys to win Best Live Act. It never fails to astound me how TT always sound like a group of old men piddling away their retirement in a northern pub. They now appear to dress like them too.
20.12 Rihanna and the Klaxons - exciting prospect, amazing strobey set but I can't shake the niggling fear that the Klaxons are always rather crap live. Luckily it is Rihanna, resplendent with a teatowel on her head, that appears to be doing most of the work. Yeah, the actual sound is a bit 'meh' but they look like a Mad Max inspired alien princess and her slaves, so all is not lost.
20.16 Oh GOD, like AIDS in the 1980's Fearne Cotton has reared her ugly head to ruin everyone's fun. I mute her. Thus far the last sixteen minutes would have actually been more enjoyable without sound.
20.23 Apparently Adele has already won the Critic's Choice Award and we are meant to know this. M-to-the-eh, although it is nice to see Will Young again and marvel at his new hairplugs.
20.26 I hope Leona Lewis doesn't win Best British Breakthrough Act, as aside from having to sing live on Loose Women, I don't think she has actually done anything to fuel her huge massive fame as she possesses not so much a team of PR people as a small Roman legion. Oh no, the singing runner bean has won.
20.29 Kylie takes to the stage with a troupe of dancing Quality Street and a bad wig. She is clearly miming, but she has beaten cancer, been cheated on and has a nice smile so all is forgiven.
20.33 Cotton mute again, but I can still see Mika looking slightly contemptuous at whatever it was she said. When Mika looks at you in contempt you know it is time to go and throw yourself into a deep pit of boiling tar.
20.40 Why is Bruce Springsteen nominated for Best Male whatever? Didn't he die ages ago? Good old Kanye: "Someone probably deserves this more than me, but I don't know who they are". Maybe so, but no one rocked hilarious venetian blind inspired sunglasses quite like you dear.
20.43 Modern day Narcissus, Mark Ronson, has won Best UK Male. He probably says something hideously pompous and self congratulatory, but I just gaze at his pretty pretty face. "He looks like he would have been a cute toddler" says the Flatmate dubiously. I think she's just hung up on his rather crap puddingbowl hairstyle though.
20.45 Our takeaway arrives so we get a bit distracted and don't watch the Kaiser Chiefs.
20.59 Kylie wins something and pretends to be all thankful and surprised, like she hasn't won a Brit every year since the dawn of time. The Flatmate and I debate the merits of David Tennant. He is wearing a t shirt like one I had from Gap when I was twelve but I still love him. The flatmate thinks he is 'pathetic' as he is over the age of twenty and wears Converse.
21.00 'A European Bridal catalogue from 1992' takes to the stage and it requires a cast of fifty dancers to make her appear even vaguely interesting. Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Leona Lewis!
21.05 The U2 Award aka Best International Group. They have now won a lifetime award though, so I think they have been put out to pasture, presumably so someone else can win. Indeed it is Foo Fighters who win and will doubtlessly now win for the next ten years.
21.07 Unfortunately PJ Harvey has not yet been able to break the curse of the Best British Female nomination for the fifty-third year in a row as Kate 'modern Pam Aires' Nash wins. She 'fanks' us all.
21.12 The Foo Fighters win something else, but our Cotton Mute went on too long so we missed what the actual award was for. Dave Grohl takes the piss yet still appears like a nice bloke, such is his all encompassing 'Good Guy' aura.
21.14 Puddingbowl Narcissus performs. "So basically all Mark Ronson does is add trumpets to things" the Flatmate observes. The Winehouse comes on! The world (well, the Brit School who are taking up the front six rows) screams for joy. She looks a little bit pale and sweaty and is vaguely reminiscent of Dorien from Birds of a Feather, but she is alive!
21.25 Arctic Monkeys win Best British Group again. They've actually turned up this year and are in costume so have obviously Sold Out.
21.27 Oh, Dorien is performing on her own. Dorien needing the loo to be strictly accurate to Ms Winehouse's dancing skills. I think it must be the nerves and the hooker heels as the lack of slurred words convinces us that she is actually sober...
21.31 ...unlike Alan Carr who is wankered. Take That win Best Single, voted for by the Great British Idiots. I'm not even sure which single it is for; when I was temping over the summer I had to listen to Capital Radio all day every day and they played Take That so much that I now fall down into a foaming mouth fit whenever I hear a snatch of any of their songs. Gnnnnnnrrrrrrrrhhhhhhrrrr.
21.35 Alan Carr leaves the stage to be replaced by an even more sozzled version of himself ten years down the line - It's Vic Reeves! Vic is very very drunk and we could be seeing our moment of controversy. Or not. Arctic Monkeys are equally wankered and take the piss out the Brit School. Perhaps they haven't sold out after all! Lots of random people stagger drunk around the stage, but we are denied this vaguely amusing spectacle and the cameras instead cut to Fearne Cotton trying to obscure a drunk staggering Alan Carr with her tiny frame. Then just as this in turn gets amusing, it cuts to the adverts.
21.41 I think it is only Paul Mc Cartney left to go so the Flatmate puts the washing machine back on and buggers the tv reception.
21.44 They start the Paul Mc Cartney montage with a load of clips of Wings. Clips of Wings! Ha, god I amuse myself sometimes. Anyway, Wings? What are they trying to prove? That Sir Paul was even vaguely cool after 1970? Even clips of his dead first wife won't make that true.
"I really shouldn't watch this, it makes me angry" The Flatmate comments, an hour and forty four minutes too late. I was all set to disagree and argue that she needs to have more irony in her life, but then Paul gets the mandolin out and I have to change the channel. We change back for a second after the Flatmate disputes my claim that it is a mandolin and not a banjo, but I win, and with that we bid farewell for another year to Britain's Third Best Awards Show.
.. no, not really. When I stumbled across this I had to pick mine to remember who Lesley Brain was. Thank god for Amazon and their insightful balanced reviewers:
