It’s that time of year again folks, the Brits 2014. As the world’s entertainment elite donned their finest clobber and headed to the O2 Arena to congratulate themselves, here at Gigslutz we squeezed into our onesies and headed to the sofa to see what was going on.

Before the programme starts a warning is read out stating that watching tonight’s events could be bad for your health. Like everyone else up and down the country I take the code words of “strobing lights” to mean “James Cordons patter” and I brace myself as such.

Arctic Monkeys kick off proceedings with belting version of R U Mine. Making full use of the Brits budget there’s some impressive pyrotechnics on display, surrounding the band throughout. As opening performances go you can’t go wrong with the Monkeys and I’m sure at the end I saw them conspiring to “Get Cordon with the fire”….

http://youtu.be/xwtEGPxFkLk

Fuck me he is on fire! And I mean in a comedy sense! No, not really, he is actually on fire. Well, his suit is a rather circus-esque stunt, to wow the punter. Any hope of serious damage to Mr Cordon is quite literally extinguished and he is onto the first award. It just begs the question; do the Brit awards really need to build the excitement by using such flaming cunts……..?

Prince strolls to present the award for Best British female artist, and as always, looking every 5 Foot, 1 inch the coolest man on the planet. Not even a fairly inappropriate “selfie” imposed on him by flame grilled whopping bell that is Cordon can ruin his cool. Ellie Golding wins, and sounds awfully posh doing so. She’s so posh that I’m expecting her to raise awareness for the tragic plight of the flood victims in Surrey but she fails to mention any charity at all. Typical Tory. Probably.

Katy Perry is up next. Cordon’s introduction is so cringe worthy I have decided to just block him out for everyone’s sake. Anyway, Perry…. Out of the bigger pop stars she tends to be in that category of ‘obviously shit but happy to listen to it above the usual pop shite’. But this song is just literally shite, not even pop.

The 2 youngest looking 40 year plus people on the planet in Kylie and Pharrell come on to introduce Best International Solo Male. With the ridiculously catchy ‘Happy’ still swirling round my ear after hearing it 4 days ago I’m surprised Williams isn’t in the category himself, however it’s Bruno Mars who takes home the award in what was an R&B heavy list of nominees. He arrives on stage with a clearly essential 9 man strong entourage, one of which is wearing a T Shirt of 80s hardcore punk band Black Flag. Bizarre.

Tina Tempa and Giant Willaboobies adorn the stage to present best British Breakthrough Act. A rather lacklustre list of nominees manages to take a massive shit on all the other great bands that have broken through in the last 12 months, with the award going to Bastille. Which is French for “Utter bastards” apparently.

Fuck me, he is on again. I know he is presenter but come on. Anyway, Cordon sits down with One Direction who prove that they are ultimate corporate puppet by telling him he is doing a “great job”. They are going to have to ask the 14 year old groupies to scrub hard to get the stench of that comment off.

Performance time and newly crowned Best International Solo winner adorns the stage next with 8 of his mates singing a song called ‘Treasure’. At first it’s inoffensively bland and carries on that way until Bruno and the lads attempt a bit of line dancing, at which stage it becomes just offensively embarrassing.

After rinsing the bleach out my eyes and ears to avoid he who shall not be named FUCKIN SHIT SEGWAY’S (sorry) I peep out to see Lily Allen on stage looking a damn site classier than earlier, wisely ditching the LA Gear Lights style shoes she was prancing about in before kickoff. As she lists off the list of candidates for Best British Band I fear that Arctic Monkeys will lose out on an award they quite clearly deserve but justice is done as The Voting Academy finds itself embroiled in an award-goes-to-deserved-band-shocker. Well done t’Monkeys.

He’s on again. The big C. The C word. Deep breaths all round…anyway, enter stage left Rosie Hunter, somebody who gets the blood boiling in a whole different way. Presenting the award they have invented for One Direction (AKA the Global Success Award), her reading skills show that pretty lasses don’t need school. Harry arrives a good while later than the rest of the lads on stage and whilst it would be easy to assume he was bucking, (the C Word suggests something similar) some are inclined to disagree with him. Let’s go with “sniffing poppers whilst listening to rave on his Walkman” instead.

Worst kept secret of the night, Beyoncé is up next and after her recent incendiary – read: filth – performance at the Grammys recently, hopes are high for more of the same. Unfortunately she sacks off the bulldozer of a song that is ‘Drunk in Love’ in favour of the much more limp ‘XO’ making it quite a poor performance overall and Moroman-esque compared to her recent offerings.

Former Mrs Brand, Katy Perry re-enters to present best British Single to Rudimental Featuring Ella Eyre. Interestingly (?) one of 4 songs out of the 10 to have someone “featuring” in it. Does this mean something? A breakdown of the barriers between artists? A reflection on the marketing execs’ influence in maximising exposure? Maybe it means James Cordon is the anti-Christ and the rapture is coming. Fuck knows, whatever it means it isn’t working as each and every one of the songs was garbage.

Lorde up next who performs her new single ‘I’m not gonna be a One Hit Wonder, promise’. Only messing folks. Playing it safe she starts off with a rather messy version of the sublime ‘Royals’ before merging into Disclosure’s ‘White Noise’ which is actually canny enough to get me to do a quick shimmy as I get up for the lavatoire.

Ignoring another MasterCard bollocks award promo, I return from the facilities to see virtual ex pat foreigners Nicole Scherzinger and Cesc Fabregas strutting on stage to present Best International Band. Probably deservedly in the scheme of things Daft Punk win and the always delightful Gigslutz hero Nile Rogers picks up the award on the French robots behalf.

Time for another live performance with Best British Female winner, Lady fackin Goulding doing the honours. The song starts with her Grace quietly playing acoustic guitar dressed as Mother Teresa (tea towel and everything) and ends with her playing drums in her underwear. Make of that what you will.

After Lady G we have Noel G of the Gallagher persuasion giving out the award for Best Male Solo Artist. Hopefully next year we will see the chief himself on the receiving end of the award. Or maybe Best Band, as the guitarist in a Mancunian outfit featuring a certain brother of his. We can but dream. In the meantime we get to see the still extremely tidy Kate Moss pick up the award on David Bowie’s behalf with Noel proclaiming that the Thin White Duke himself is too cool to grace such events and possibly missing the irony in the process.

The Fat White Puke (clever eh) gets his mate Nick Griffin onstage to present Best International Female. A (surprisingly Beyoncé free) strong set of nominations shows that female pop is in rude health, especially when lined up next to the blokes. Amongst some utterly hilarious “top bantz” from “the lads” on stage, Nick Griffin hands the award to Lorde.

The Taxman’s best mate, Jimmy Carr rattles off a couple of rib ticklers before introducing the award for best video. Watching the nominations it was clear to see that The Voting Academy have made the brave decision to ignore any videos that used any creativity and originally, instead going for the often over looked genre that is “Wankers Gurning Into The Camera and Waving”. With One Direction in the running the bookies closed betting a while ago on this one and they leave the stage as winners.

http://youtu.be/8-sAdsSn25M

I’m made up to see that ITV have finally seen sense and got rid of the James Colostomy and replaced him with White Dee from Benefits Street. She still has the same shite patter when introducing a Bastille and Rudimental joint performance but I suppose they didn’t have time to change the writers yet. Anyway, joint performance, (or ‘collaboration’ as Dee called it, the posh *$@!) manages to do an incredible job of imitating the exact noise you make as you are flicking through pop radio stations trying to find a decent song.

The Crotchless Wanky is now sat with Pharrell, Nile and incredibly manages to upstage both of them with his magnetic personality and inherent wit. I jest.

Emily Sandpit has the honour of presenting the last, and most heavily promo’d award of the evening, The MasterCard British Album of the year. To give it its full title. Emily herself clearly hasn’t let the majesty of such an award get to her, looking like she just nipped on stage after a jog. But this isn’t about cocktail dresses and haircuts is it folks, it’s about the music. And it’s the music of the Arctic Monkeys AM which gets the nod. Hats off to the Voting Academy etc etc but it would have been an absolute tragedy otherwise.

Watching them take the stage there’s a slight tinge of (very undeserved) pride at seeing one of “our lot” claim the 2 big awards of the night, defeating the mammoth, money filled marketing machine that is modern pop music. Whether you like the Arctic Monkeys or not you can’t argue their integrity.  They have gone about their business their own way, taking risks, never pandering and never, ever playing the game. To have that recognised by mainstream awards is both rare and exceptional. Well played lads.

Wrapping up tonight’s proceedings White Dee announces a couple of lads called Nile Rodgers and Pharrell Williams to knock out a few tunes. Unsure of the exact names of the songs, I can only assume from the chorus that they were called, ‘Get Lucky’, ‘Good Times’ and ‘Happy’. Listening to these 3 ditties for the first time manages to do an incredible job of imitating the exact noise you hear as you as you walk into Heaven’s best night club, with God himself on the decks.

It’s all enough to make you forget some of the tripe that has come before and as the credits roll a smile creeps across my face as I see White Dee dancing with her new friends. ………………. Hold on, that’s not White Dee is it? AH, it was that Cordon all along. Sigh.

Till next year folks….

END

http://youtu.be/sA1WnQDoaSg