Brit Awards

2009's Brit Awards ceremony was held at Earl's Court Exhibition Centre, London. Several people attended.

The Brit Awards is an annual wankfest ritual held every February in London to honour the stars of the British Music Industry. Tracing its history back to 1977, when it was intended to be a one-off occasion, it was decided in 1982 to hold the event annually due to the vast advertising revenue earned by the hosting television station during the broadcasting of the programme and it has continued every year since then.

Notable Moments and Controversies

1977-1986

1977 Held at the Wembley Conference Centre in honour of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. The Beatles win the main prize. The Sex Pistols are not invited to perform God Save the Queen, which is odd since they were the very epitome of the uninteresting, manufactured boy-band that the Brits later became famous for honouring.
1982 First of the annual Brit Award ceremonies, held at the Grosvenor House Hotel. John Lennon wins the main prize, but is unable to collect it in person due to being dead. His widow Yoko Ono is likewise unable to collect it in person because nobody can stand the tripe-faced crone and so she wasn't invited.
1983 The Beatles win the main prize. Again.
1984 Main prize won by George Martin, The Beatles' producer. Brit organisers shocked to hear new British music has been produced since The Beatles' demise 14 years previously.
1985 The Beatles win no prizes. However, Bob Geldof - every bit as much a sanctimonious twat as John Lennon - wins an Outstanding Contribution award. This is the final cermony to include a Best Classical Award, as the producers realised that the vast majority of British people had no interest in "faggy la-la crap."

1987-1996

KLF frontman Bill Drummond fires a machine gun into the crowd, prior to leaving a dead sheep in the exhibition centre. Good to see that pop stars still provide a positive example for our children, if you ask me. He's smoking too - good man.

1987 Kate Bush wins a prize, and I have my first ever wank during her performance.
1989 Absolutely everything that could possibly go wrong does in a show presented by The Sun's page 3 stunna Samantha "DD" Fox and Mick Fleetwood - who looks like a cross between an evil hypnotist and a haunted tree - of long-forgotten purveyors of boredom Fleetwood Mac. Most people think that the debacle will lead to the Brit Awards Ceremony being abolished, but tragically they're incorrect.
1991 Utterly poo Betty Boo does the do and wins an award, proving that pop music has lost any cultural worth it may ever have possessed. She was really cute, though.
1992 Some very strange people called the KLF team up with charming old folks' favourites Extreme Noise Terror and fire blanks from a machine gun into the audience. Unfortunately, no record industry bigwigs or celebrities were injured in the ensueing panic. Later, they leave a dead sheep in the entrance foyer - nobody knows why. They share their award with Simply Red, who unsurprisingly don't do anything like that. REM win Best International Group award and have been releasing records that sound exactly the same ever since in the hope of winning another one.
1993 REM's plan works - they win the Best International Group award again.
1994 Irritatingly squeaky Icelandic hamster-woman cross Björk wins two prizes. British Björk fans are surprised to learn that she is not, despite her behaviour, nine years old but had previously enjoyed limited indie fame in somewhat boring punk band The Sugarcubes as long ago as 1957. The ceremony is hosted by transsexual model RuPaul, who is made to look butch and masculine by co-host Elton "Wig" John. Take That win Best Song and Best Video awards with Pray, despite the fact that both the song and the video are crap.
1995 REM win Best International Group award again. The British record-buying public are slightly shocked when told that REM are in fact not the only music group to have originated outside the UK's borders.
1996 Jarvis Cocker, of briefly-popular indie pop group Pulp, invades the stage to disrupt Michael Jackson's sickening Earth Song performance, and in doing so guarantees himself a place in heaven and the hearts of all people worldwide.

1997-2006

Spice up your life? Give up that dress. Come one love, you're at least 40 - time to start wearing longer skirts, eh?

1997 Some hideous ginger trollop from the Spice Girls wears an indescribably vulgar frock with a Union Jack pattern on it. She looks like the dog's dinner after the dog has eaten it, partly digested it and thrown it back up again - only with ginger hair, to make it even worse. The British tabloid press went mad and had to change their pants because it was possible to see a little bit of her knickers. Later versions of the Spice Girls collectible figurines included a ginger doll dressed in a miniature version of the dress, 98% of which were sold to unmarried middle-aged men. The remaining 2% probably lie forgotten under shelving units in Toys Я Us. Robert Miles wins an award for excruciatingly tedious half-hour-long insipid Balearic house music effort Children. The Prodigy win Best Dance Act.
1998 Tiresome and long since disappeared pointless 'anarchist art collective' Chumbawamba (at that time very anarchistically signed to massive multinational record label EMI - now signed to No Masters since their inexplicable and quick-to-pass popularity went down the pan) throw a bucket of cold water over deputy Prime Minister John "Fat Cunt & Serial Shagger" Prescott. Witnesses who were in the audience reported that they were "shocked and dismayed that the bucket contained only water and not nitric acid mixed with rusty old razor blades, AIDS and piss." Remarkably, ex-boxer Prescott - a man known to be quick with his fists - did not retaliate. Bad decision, fat boy - you'd have got my vote. In an effort to show that they are devil-may-care, rock'n'roll hardmen, the British Phonograph Industry once again award Best Dance Act to the Prodigy, who have a wild and aggressive image. If only they'd had the balls to give it to Spiral Tribe instead.

Danbert Nobacon, of dangerous anarcho-punk collective Chumbawamba, displays his revolutionary credentials by dying his hair an unusual shade of red. He is quick to point out that he has not become decadent and had it done by a hairdresser, but did it in his own bathroom even though he earned over £2million while signed to EMI records.

1999 The Year That Controversy Forgot. Nothing happens. The media desperately try to concoct some sort of story out of an argument over whether numbingly boring indie band Belle and Sebastian or nauseatingly commercial pop group Steps should have won some prize or another, but nobody cares one way or the other, except for Steps who cry. The Awards organisers promise that they'll create a special award called The Best Selling Live Act, which Steps can have next year and give them all a sweetie. The Titanic film soundtrack wins an award (it has one thing to recommend it - it's much shorter than the movie which manages to squeeze around two minutes of worthwhile story into over three grinding hours of cinematic torture), surprisingly known as the Best Soundtrack award, even though it includes one of the most excruciating pieces of aural agony ever produced - equine harridan Céline "Cat Being Raped" Dion's My Heart Will Go On which sounds a bit like putting your genitals into a vinegar-soaked bacon slicer feels.
2000 De Gaulle-esqueDavina McCall somehow finds time out from being on absolutely every TV programme that exists to host. Robbie Williams (the fat one from Take That) and Liam Gallagher (scabby-looking Mancunian bloke from Beatles-rip-off act Oasis) pretended to hate each other and said they were going to have a fight but didn't even though audience members eagerly handed them knives and broken bottles in the hope of seeing at least one of them get injured, preferably fatally. It was later rumoured that the row was in fact a stunt aimed at drawing press attention to themselves as their record sales had notably dropped (in Robbie's case because it had been rumoured that he was gay and most British people are small-minded idiotic homophobes; in Liam's case because anyone with half a brain wishes Myra Hindley had got hold of him back in 1960s Manchester). DJ Brandon Block, a man with little aptitude behind the decks or indeed in any other walk of life, and Ronnie Wood from washed-up old has-beens the Rolling Stones nearly have a fight too. Block had got drunk and his mates told him he'd been called up to receive a prize so he climbed onto the stage, but they were actually playing a trick on him so security bundled him off. Wood, who believes himself to be a bit handy in a fight (he is in fact known to be a bit dodgy, but only because he's a drug-addled, senile piss-head who insists on trying to better Keith Richards) then called him a rude name, certain that Block would be unwilling to respond. However, Block - aware of Wood only as some old bloke from a band his dad likes - climbed back onto the stage and had a bit of verbal, both of them taking great care to ensure the microphone picked up every word they said. Once it had become boring, ie; after around half a second, security pulled them both off stage.
2001 Unlovable Geordie fuckwits Ant and Dec present the show. Robbie Williams wins three awards. Coldplay, the most boring band to have ever existed win two awards. U2 (the most preachy, holier-than-thou band in history) also win two awards. Theologians worldwide accept that this year's selections prove that God is dead. Bono, lead singer of U2, offers to take over His responsibilities.
2002 Blood is shed as rival hip hop posses So Solid Crew and S Club 7 battle it out on stage in the latest violence to erupt over a long-standing disagreement between the two shady collectives, concerning who controls illegal drug supplies and pimping in South London. Bullets fly and police take over seven hours to bring the situation back under control, in what politicians and newspapers term "the most chilling example of gang warfare ever to have taken place on British soil." The Daily Mail uses the story to claim a large percentage of violent crime in the UK is carried out by immigrants as Rachel Stevens of S Club 7 is Jewish and most members of So Solid Crew are black. Oh, and criminals. Which may be coincidental. Or not. Or possibly so.
2003 After being shunned for over a decade since Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby, white rap finally becomes accepted as Eminem wins two awards for his actually-quite-good and really rather fun album The Marshall Mathers LP. Tragically, success goes to the poor wee scamp's tousled blond head and he rapidly begins to take himself far too seriously and turns into a complete arse. Davina McCall - the career of whom now consists mostly of appearing in shampoo and hair dye advertisements and hosting vacuous reality TV programmes - is once again happy to host but this time is paid merely a fraction of the fee she received in 2000.
2004 Vapid Cat Deeley, The Darkness, Busted, Basement Jaxx, Dido, Daniel "I Wish I'd Never Suggested Making A Record To My Sister" Bedingfield, Lemur, Justine Timberlake, 50 Cent, Beyonce and Duran Duran are gathered together, same time, same place and yet - crushingly - Al Qaeda do not take this fine opportunity to fly an aircraft into Earl's Court. Missed opportunity there guys - had you have done and we'd have supported you all the way. OK, you'd have killed The White Stripes who are quite good too, but fuck 'em, it'd have been worth it.
2005 Hosted by Chris "Gingernuts" Evans, a man who bears more than a passing resemblance to a facially-disfigured inbred chipmunk that has been hit in the mouth with a sock full of nuts and bolts. Bob Geldof wins the Outstanding Contribution to Music award, even though he hasn't really done anything much apart from when he collected a load of long-forgotten second-rate singers together two decades ago to create the most sickeningly piss-poor charity Christmas records ever released. Even Nelson Mandela manages a release more often than Geldof. Robbie Williams' Angels wins a special Best Record of the last 25 Years award, marking 25 years of the Brit Awards, even though records such as New Order's Blue Monday, Ace of Spades by Motörhead, London Calling by The Clash, The Jam's Going Underground, Ghost Town by The Specials, Kraftwerk's The Model, Rockit by Herbie Hancock, Killing Moon by Echo and the Bunnymen, everything ever released by The Pixies, Barbarism Begins At Home by The Smiths, Grateful Dead's Touch of Grey, Me, Myself and I by De La Soul, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Bombtrack by Rage Against The Machine and even Natasha Bedingfield's stunning These Words came out in the same time period, and a whole shitload of stuff far better than anything Williams has ever done or ever will do (apart from his death).
2006 Satan cackles as the first step in his plan to achieve world domination is completed - pop music's biggest rhyming slang James Blunt has been inflicted upon the world. Everyone in Britain's mums bought his first record, which led to him receiving the British Male Solo Artist award. Musicians and music lovers worldwide commit suicide rather than live in a reality that includes Blunt.

2007-present

2007 Amy Winehouse wins the British Female Solo Artist award, music fans argue over whether or not she's as good a singer as Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, then realise that she's better than both. Amy celebrates by embarking on a long, drawn-out and quite boring suicide. Devon-born Joss Stone - who has never quite shaken off her farmhand appearance - attempts to upstage Winehouse by singing a line from Winehouse's song Rehab. Great idea, Joss. Pick a woman widely accepted amongst jazz aficionados to be have the best voice in 50 years and try to upstage her by singing her song? Clever. Best International Breakthrough Act goes to someone called Orson. No, I've never heard of them either. Russell Brand hosts the show and makes certain he offends people in the hope that doing do will prevent anyone from noticing how shit he actually is and how there's really no reason whatsoever for his being allowed to continue living. If only we'd stuck him in front of a firing squad back then, we'd have avoided all the sleep-inducing furore when he made his unfunny and really not very offensive prank phone call recently. Of course, to make sure it never happened, you have to shoot Jonathon Ross too. Ho hum.

Mick Fleetwood steals the souls of several audience members, ready for later consumption.

2008 Obnoxious, little-girl-voiced witch Sharon Osbourne yanks a microphone away from potato-like comedian Vic Reeves, whom she believes to be drunk. The next day, Reeves reports that his feelings were "hurt" by Sharon's behaviour - so that's OK then. Paul "I Used to Hang Out With Some Half-Decent Musicians In The 60s" McCartney wins Outstanding Contribution to Music award, even though he wrote The Frog Song and hasn't in fact written anything good since the demise of The Beatles - and let's face it, they were actually a bit shit most of the time too.
2009 Outstanding Contribution to Music award is won by the Pet Shop Boys, whose synthesizer has been stuck in the same program since 1985 which gives hope to all amateur musicians short of funds worldwide.

Transcript from the 2009 Awards Television Broadcast

The Cast

Gok Wan shortly after tasting pure ammonia...oh, our mistake - this is his 'handsome' face.

Sara Cox - a 'ladette' radio and television presenter who was slightly amusing ten years ago, but whose behaviour has become increasingly embarrassing as she approaches middle age.
Gok Wan - ridiculously tall fashion expert who used to be very fat. Now very thin, but has a face like a dog's arse wiped on a stinging nettle. Confirmed homosexual.
Johnny Vegas - formerly revoltingly obese Northerner who for reasons unknown is very successful on the comedy circuit. Drinks a lot of beer, doesn't tell a lot of jokes - or not many funny ones, at any rate.
Nicole Appleton - singer from popular-yet-atrocious girly harmony group All Saints. Reasonably good on recorded works, utter shite when performing live. Not very intelligent.
Melanie Blatt - also from All Saints, likewise afflicted with inability to reproduce studio harmonics when performing live. Much prettier than Appleton, but equally dim intellectually.
Kylie Minogue - inexplicably popular Australian singer and actress who - if there was any justice in this world - would have faded away years ago. However, despite her limited reserves of talent, she has been able to forge a career based entirely on the supposed (yet really quite limited) loveliness of her arse.
James Cordon - comparatively posh (when compared with the other presenters, that is, about as classy as a landfill site seagull that survives on a diet of used disposable nappies when compared with anyone else) actor who was in The History Boys (not just the film, but the play too so he must be posh) by professional Yorkshireman and playwright Alan Bennett.
The Crowd - The Brit Awards 2009 was attended by a crowd of around 20 teenage girls who left disappointed because none of the male stars asked any of them to marry them.

Cox: "Welcome and good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us here at the Brit Awards prize giving ceremony 2009, coming to you live from the Earl's Court Exhibition Centre in London! I'm Sara Cox, out here with a wild crowd and I'll be here on the red carpet all night to see the stars as they come into the building and I'll be trying to bring you a few exclusive interviews! And...yes! Here's our first celebrity - I don't know who it is yet but the doors of the limo are opening now...it's...it's...it's TV fashion guru Gok Wan! Gok! Over here! Gok! How lovely to see you here this evening!"
Gok: "I imagine it is, Sara, because seeing an sphincter-faced cretin like me at a glitzy event like this surely gives hope to all the proles out there."
Cox: "Can you give me any style tips, Gok?"
Gok: "Why, of course, Sara! Don't wear that hideous frock again - you look like a fucking Pict chewing on a wasp. Oh, and sort that fringe out, you hag."
Cox: "Oh, that's great, thanks Gok! Who'd have thought it - fashion tips from Gok! We love him, don't we, ladies and gentlemen! It's Gok everyone!"
Crowd: "Yay! Whoop! Gok! Yay!"
Cox: "Well, there doesn't seem to be anyone else arriving just yet so we'll hand you over to Johnny Vegas who is inside the building now."

Vegas enjoys a light pre-show snack of egg-and-bacon pies.

Vegas: "Eee, aye, reet good Sara, thanks an' that. Ah wuz jest 'ahvin' another pork pie but ah've finished the bugger now. Fookin' 'ell. Aye, so welcome to the Brit Awards 2009. The Brits started back in 1977 when they wuz presented by Michael Aspel at t'Wembley Conference Centre. Then they didn't 'ave them fer few years 'til 1982. They used to 'ave award fer classical music then, ye ken, but no worries folks, we know now that the British public don't give a shit 'baht culture so there'll be none o'that big jessy stoof tonight. Then there wuz few more which weren't noothing to wraht 'ome abaht until 1989 when they 'ad one presented by Samantha Fox and 'er boobies. But that one were a bit of a disaster really, and a lot o'people reckoned there weren't to be no more - they wuz wrong, like, 'cos the advertising revenues from this thing are fookin' enormous so ITV are gonna screw it fer every penny they can and it'll go on forever. Eee bah gum, ah've just received a word int' ear that Nicole Appleton and Melanie Blatt 'ave foond Kylie backstage, so over to them now!"
ADVERTISING BREAK
Nicole&Melanie: "Kylie! Kylie! We lav yew Kylie! Everyone lavs you Kylie! Azzit fill bein' 'ere tonight, Kylie?"
Minogue: "G'day, cobbers - and yeah, I know everyone loves me. Strewth, it's 'cos I've got such a great arse I reckon - certainly can't be 'cos of my singing, can it, 'cos you gotta face it mate I always was a bit shit."
Nicole&Melanie: "Kylie! Kylie! So, Kylie, yer doin' some of the presentin' tonight innit?"
Minogue: "Strewth mate, I gotta admit, I won't be doing much of it at all. I'm only really here 'cos so many people love me that ITV reckon I'll pull in a shedload more viewers."
Nicole&Melanie: "Any chance of yew revealin' who might be in the runnin' fer some of the awards then, Kyles?"
Minogue: "Nah, sorry girls, I've been sworn to secrecy on that one! My lips are sealed mate! Anyway, I gotta be off and rehearse me lines. See you around!"
Nicole: "Oi Mel, yeah, I tell you what - that Kylie's a bit of alright innit?"
Melanie: "Fuckin' is an' all. She might be a bird but I wouldn't 'alf give 'er one."
ADVERTISING BREAK
Cordon: "Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I'm James Cordon - yes, that's quite right, the same one who starred in Alan Bennett's play The History Boys. Welcome to the British Phonographic Industry annual awards ceremony. Of course, I'm frightfully above all this - I've worked with Alan Bennett you know. Oh yah, really. I was in The History Boys, his play, in a theatre - that's sort of like a cinema, only with plays instead of films, and classy people like me go there instead of scum like everyone else here at the Brits. Written by him - Alan Bennett. I was in that, and I was absolutely spiffing. But I digress - haw! Haw! Haw! Now let's go back over to Sara on the red carpet..."
(The show carries on with few changes from the above script until some minor celebrity shows up about an hour later, and only then because they've been kicked out of the Groucho Club for not being famous enough).

The Awards

This is what it's all about, folks - a plastic Oscars-rip off trophy that looks like it came from Poundland. Still, Katy Perry looks happy with it. Mind you, looking at her eyes, I'd say she was feeling pretty happy about a lot of things at the time this photo was taken. Especially Bolivian exports, if you know what I mean. I mean, she's happy to have heard that Bolivian Free Trade products in Oxfam have greatly increased the quality of life experienced by poor Bolivian farmers. What did you think I meant?

British Male Solo Artist - awarded to the male artist to have sold the most records in the previous year, thus making the most money for the British Phonographic Industry executives.
British Female Solo Artist - allegedly awarded to the female artist to have sold the most records in the previous year, but actually awarded to the most sexually attractive. Apart from in 2009, when dumpling-faced Welshie Duffy won it. And 2008, when Kate Nash got it. Oh, and, erm, 2007 when it was given to Amy Winehouse, who looks like a crystal meth addicted truck driver. But KT Tunstall got it the year before that, and she's alright. Ish.
British Group - the group to have sold the most records in the previous year, awarded for the same reason as British Male.
British Breakthrough Act - awarded to a new band who the British Phonographic Industry wishes to promote, in order to sell more of their records.
International Male - awarded to the male artist to have sold most records in the previous year.
International Female - awarded to the female artist to have sold the most records in the previous year.
International Group - awarded to the best group called REM.
Critic's Choice Award - given to some 'serious' band who virtually nobody has ever heard of, so that the Brits isn't accused of being a commercial sell-out that gives awards according to number of records sold rather than commercial merit. I mean - Florence and the Machine? Who? Are you sure you didn't just make them up to sound cool, like students do?
The Made-Up Award - given to any band who feel strongly that they should have been awarded something the previous year and have been sufficiently commercially successful as to afford very good lawyers.
Outstanding Contribution to Music Award - given to whichever washed-up old has-been artist or band has a new album out, in the hope of capturing some of their past commercial success and making more money for British Phonographic Industry executives.

See Also

• Music
• Eurovision Song Contest
• Do They Know It's Christmas? (1983 Version)
• Brit rock
• How to Milk a Cash Cow