Thanks to a particularly memorable bout of flu or a virus or whatever the hell it was, my BRITs 2018 coverage was somewhat interrupted this year, which I know may have upset about three of you, but there you go. We're all human. Anyway, sorry for the delay and all that - and while the BRITs may have been and gone, there are still some interesting talking points that we can discuss, as well as using up the copy I had written before the event actually took place and was damned if it was going to waste.

So, the 38th edition of the BRITs (aka 'The Award Ceremony That Hasn't Actually Been Worse Ploughing Two-and-a-Half Hours Of Your Time Into Since Jarvis Cocker's 1996 Stage Invasion, But There's Naff-All Else on Telly So Why Not?' - admittedly, the BRITs is a catchier name). If it's your kind of thing, there was a so-called "Brits Social Squad" operating this year who covered the launch show. This team consisted of Joel, Grace Victory, Lucy Connell, Lydia Connell and Troy. Note I said (or rather, typed) that I sound like I know who the bloody hell these people are. I assure you that I don't. I've never heard of them, and doubt I ever will apart from this short stint on the "Brits Social Squad", which sounds less like a social media service and more like an oppressive, government-led police force in some dystopian sci-fi drama. Seriously, I hope Joel, Grace Victory et al fuck off and get trolled. After more than reluctantly Googling this motley crew, I see Grace is (predictably) a vlogger; Lucy and Lydia Connell are...ooh, vloggers! Can you see where this is going? I lost the will to live before I could enter Joel and Troy into Google, but I think its a pretty safe bet as to what they are. They probably earn more in a day from spouting the benefits of a particular brand of smartphone knob-extension than I would in a year. 

Meanwhile. Over on Musical.ly (I have no idea what that is, either) Laura Bubble - no, me neither - presented from the red carpet on the launch show. It's telling that Ms. Bubble was not invited to participate on the main show, probably for having a stupid name like Bubble. In a delightful turn of events, neither Antan Deck nor James Police-Cordon are hosting the ceremony this year (the monopolies and competition watchdogs are allegedly onto Antan Deck for hogging all the available ITV overtime  on the basis Ant is trying to amass funds in preparation for his divorce, and Cordon's ego expanded to such huge levels since he buggered off to the USA that he has now been absorbed by - and in 2016, was officially suffocated to death by - his own arsehole. It is thought he has been kept alive since this time by some form of malelovent spirit that was raised by the CBS network after chanting an ancient invocation. This spirit now lives in his arse and forces him to come out with all manner of bullshit fed to him by CBS network bigwigs. 

And so, the presenting honours this year fall to Jack Whitehall. I used to think he was a complete twat, but was converted after seeing his ace Netflix series 'Travels With My Father'. I had hoped his dad or Winston the doll (seriously, watch the show) might have made an appearance, as I expected Michael Whitehall might have a similar reassuring level of dry-witted sarcasm and utter horror towards many of the acts on the BRITs bill as I did, but unfortunately he stayed away. How I would have laughed if he'd just asked the question I imagine a good 80% of us asked at the time, which was..."who the fuck is J Hus?" 

Now that the awards are over, it seems a good time to go over the awards and who won what, when and where, and for how long. Incidentally, the award this year doesn't actually appear to be an award, but an enormous hunk of red plastic that looks like its the mould used to make the BRIT award statues. It looks very unwieldy, and I'm not sure what people are meant to do with such a thing - possibly store their kitchen knives in it? Who knows. Anyway - the awards:

BRITISH COLLECTION OF MORE THAN TEN SONGS THAT PEOPLE WERE FORCED TO BUY AS A WHOLE INSTEAD OF JUST DOWNLOADING BITS OF IT
Prediction - British albums? Don't talk to me about British albums, they're all ghastly. As sure as shit ain't shiny, this was a shoe-in for Sheeran, I felt. The man is literally everywhere. If he could get away with it, I'm sure he'd be in your bathroom, watching you crimp out a shit. And then he'd probably write a song about it for his next album 'Algebra'. Stormzy was an outside bet, I thought, but if J Hus - whoever he/she/it is - won, then I declared I would make myself disappear in a puff of 'how the fuck did that happen'.
Winner - Stormzy ('Gang Signs & Prayer')

BRITISH SONG THAT PEOPLE CAN DOWNLOAD BY ITSELF INSTEAD OF HAVING TO WASTE A TENNER ON THE ALBUM
Prediction: Well, this one was just bloody pot luck. Especially after the notion of a 'single' disappeared into thin air and a single was seemingly reclassified to basically mean any instance of recorded sound ever made that can be purchased or streamed online. They might as well reclassify a miracle as being something you saw happen on a 'Harry Potter' film, just because it was there on-screen. In terms of nominees, Clean Bandit were all over the BBC Christmas idents, Sheeran lingers like the most apocalyptic fart from the bowels of Satan himself, and there's far too many artists nowadays who need their hands holding via the means of the one word guaranteed to induce shudders of horror and trepidation - "featuring". Calvin Harris is the absolute worst offender for this, to the extent that it seems unlikely he's able to dress, feed, wipe himself or engage in acts of self-pleasuring without having an army of featured artists to assist him. To put it another way, Harris has worked with a staggering forty-five different featured performers across four of his five studio albums he's put out since 2007, which indicates he sees himself as a painter of canvases for others to spurt their musical impressions over, or he just doesn't like working by himself very much. I'm going to be completely biased here and say Little Mix ought to win, because as regular BRITs coverage followers know, I'm very much a fan of Jade Thirlwall, who is, although it would be extremely unlikely - young enough to be my daughter. I would've had to have boffed her mum when I was eleven, but...you know, you read about such things. I'm going to stop there, before things get any weirder. 
Winner - Rag 'n' Bone Man ('Human')

MUSIC VIDEO THAT NOBODY BOTHERS WATCHING ANYMORE BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL CRASHINGLY AWFUL AND BESIDES, THEY DON'T LOOK VERY GRAND ON A SMARTPHONE SCREEN OH GOD I'M SO DEPRESSED
Prediction: Blimey, another category where you might as well stick a ruddy pin into a name; they're all as bad as each other. If you're expecting something with the effort of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', then man, this ain't the awards show for you. Again, Little Mix should take it simply for featuring Jade. Although to be fair, I didn't actually mind that Harry Styles one where he has the mother of all trips on the Isle of Skye and flies around all over the place, so if either of them got it, I would have been happy. I did have an awful feeling in my guts it was going to be Sheeran again, because...well, why the fuck not.
Winner - Harry Styles ('Sign of the Times')

BRITISH ARTIST WHO IS NOT A FEMALE WOMAN, BEAR OR INANIMATE OBJECT
Prediction: A boy-on-boy scrap between Sheeran and Stormzy here. Stormzy would quite clearly take Sheeran in a fight, but in this one I feel it was going to be the Ginger Ninja's year, despite Liam Gallagher coming into his own last year and showing that, at the present time, he's releasing better stuff than Noel (who appears to have used all his good songs up and is transitioning from respected indie rock God and commander of Britpop into a slightly embarrassing bloke who's old enough to be your dad). I have Absolutely No Fucking Clue who Loyle Carner is. None at all. I'd say he's a rapper - Wikipedia calls him a "hip-hop musician" which will do for me. 
Winner - Stormzy

BRITISH ARTIST WHO IS NOT A MALE MAN, BEAR OR INANIMATE OBJECT
Prediction: Good try Marling, but you're destined for failure. You're just too niche. If Dua Lipa wasn't on the list, I would have said Paloma Faith (who inherited Roisin Murphy from Moloko's UN role as Woman Who Dresses Like a Gigantic Liquorice Allsort in 2008) would have got this. Despite never knowingly hearing a Dua Lipa track (seriously, they don't play her on Radio 2 and I rarely see music channels on Sky or whatever now) I'm vaguely aware that she is the best thing since sliced Sheeran, and so should waltz off with this one quite comfortably. Amazingly, I have heard of another nominee, Kate Tempest, but thought she was bloody awful. She's a poet! If we're allowing this on the female list, then I'm going to petition the BRITs to allow John Cooper-Clarke to go on the Best British Male list next year.  
Winner - Dua Lipa

BRITISH ARTISTS WHO ARE A COLLECTION OF MALE MEN, FEMALE WOMEN OR BOTH (OR, INDEED, NEITHER)
Prediction: The only category, for  me, where we mainly escaped the pop dross that saturated the rest of the ceremony, like pus seeping through the dressing on a tramp's manky, gangrenous leg. Just because they still seem edgy and because hipsters seem to like them, I'm going with The XX. I used to like Gorillaz, before they turned from an actually quite interesting music and art experiment into a fucking "rent-a-singer" project with increasingly poor results - it seems like every subsequent album has been a step back). London Grammar are fine if you like being lulled gently to sleep, and neither Royal Blood or Wolf Alice (despite being rather respectable groups) are nowhere near mainstream enough to clinch this one. Neither are The XX, but the BRITs nominations committee are giving me bloody scraps to work with here.
Winners - Gorillaz

BRITISH ACT WHO HAVE ONLY BEEN AROUND FOR FIVE BLOODY MINUTES BUT APPARENTLY NEED THE VALIDATION OF GETTING AN AWARD FOR NOT HAVING DONE VERY MUCH PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME
Prediction: I didn't even bother with this one. There's someone up for this award called Sampha. I thought 'sampha' was that weird green vegetable that's a bit like asparagus, but apparently that is 'samphire'. And as for Dave - DAVE - that's what classes as a professional musician's recording name now, is it? Fucking hell.
Winner - Dua Lipa

FOREIGNER WHO IS NOT A FEMALE WOMAN, BEAR OR INANIMATE OBJECT
Prediction: Oh...Drake for this one, definitely. Definitely Drake. Without a shadow of a doubt. There is no way, in any universe, that Drake cannot win this. He just seems so...popular. I've not looked at the UK Top 40 since about 1998 and even I've heard of him. From my very limited knowledge, he seems like he'd be a bit like Usher - you know, wears baseball caps. Hit with the ladies. Drives a big fuck-off sports car. I also know he's Canadian, so special gold-star for me. Beck had quite a good album out recently by all acccounts, but I wouldn't know because I only ever bought 'Odelay' back in the 90s. Childish Gambino and DJ Khaled I have never heard of, although I see the latter had an appearance in that instant film classic 'Pitch Perfect 3', which shall one day be mentioned in the same breath as 'Citizen Kane', 'The Shawshank Redemption' and 'Star Wars'.
Winner - Not Drake. Rather, Kendrick Lamar

FOREIGNER WHO IS NOT A MALE MAN, BEAR OR INANIMATE OBJECT
Prediction: Right, first off - I cannot stand Lorde. I just don't "get" her. I don't get her image, her sound...nothing. She just seems a bit of a madam to me, really. Alicia Keys has sort of had her day, and her inclusion seems to be a bit of a sympathy vote. It jars slightly seeing her in there, like it's 2008 again or something. Why not whack Toni Braxton in there as well? Bjork now forges a career in being deliberately weird and inaccessible, and Pink is, again, one who ought to really call it a day. That leaves, sorry to say it, Taylor Swift. Honestly, it's like having to give Teresa May an award for The Best Person Called Teresa Who is a National Leader. This is really quite a shame, because if we completely discount her musical abilty - something we really ought to have done about ten years ago - she's actually quite fit.
Winner - Lorde. For God's sake.

FOREIGNERS WHO ARE A COLLECTION OF MALE MEN, FEMALE WOMEN OR BOTH (OR INDEED, NEITHER)
Prediction: If The Killers won this, I was going to drink some bleach. Seriously. their last album was fucking terrible. And I mean offensively, "we couldn't really give a flying fuck" terrible. Really this ought to go to Arcade Fire (for their lovely coloured vinyl edition of their album 'Everything Now') or LCD Soundsystem (for sheer bloody-minded perserverance) but it won't. Haim I can take or leave, but if I'm perfectly honest, those three sisters scare the living shit out of me. It's like...they're all the same, but different? No way, I'm not down with that, it's too creepy. It's like the twins from 'The Shining' have brought a friend along. I'm going with Foo Fighters; you've got to love Dave Grohl - any band tat can succeed from the ashes of a former band like they did after Nirvana's suicide-induced dissolution deserves something (see also: New Order).
Winners - Foo Fighters

ACT YOU'VE NEVER HEARD OF WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DESTINED FOR GREATNESS THIS YEAR AND WHO YOU WILL LIKE AND WHO YOU WILL BUY THEIR RECORDS OR THE MUSIC INDUSTRY WILL GO ON STRIKE
Jorja Smith is this year's winner of that award that basically means they will be forced down our necks and up our arses for the next God-knows how long, before featuring at length on 'Later...With Jools Holland' on at least seventeen separate occasions. Their song will inevitably be used on a TV ad. Since 2008, this award has been a pretty decent way of brainwashing us with the likes of Adele, Florence and the Bastard Machine, Ellie Goulding, Jessie J, Emeli Sande and whinging fuck-sack Sam Smith, who has recently had an entire circle of Hell reserved for him for when he gets "too good at goodbyes". Cheer up, you miserable fucker. In fact, the only ones to come out of the mire relatively unscathed have been Tom Odell, James Bay and Rag 'n' Bone Man, so the odds for young Jorja aren't particularly amazing. Still, well done and all that. You win...I don't know, a magic cup-cake or something.

Winner - Jorja Smith

In addition to the awards winners, there were some notable points to pick up on, which certainly got people talking.

THE CONTINUING P.R. NIGHTMARE THAT IS CHERYL AND LIAM PAYNE
Christ almighty, I hate it when there are obviously staged segments like this. Poor Jack Whitehall looked mortified to be doing it, and seemed to know why it was taking place. A ghastly "look at our show of solidarity in the face of enormous mass media speculation" thing, this was two minutes where my toes didn't stop curling the entire time. What made it worse was the foray into bondage safe-words, which she revealed her own was "Don't Stop". Bloody hellfire. Even Liam looked like he was putting a brave face on, and probably had severe words with her after the cameras weren't on them. Of course, what made the entire thing all the more hilarious was Este Haim, from the creepy girl band Haim, winking drunkenly and mouthing the words "call me" at Liam as this hideous, fake interview took place. The only way she could have topped this was by either flashing her tits or actually straddling Liam in front of Cheryl and chewing his face off whilst thrusting his hand up her skirt. Magic.  Meanwhile, Cheryl (I think she's had that many last names she's forgotten which one to use now) and Liam would love you to think that straight after the awards, they're going back to engage in a fifteen-hour session of love-making, when in reality they're probably just going to go back and engage in fifteen hours of Trying the Fuck Not to Talk To Each Other.

KENDRICK LAMAR'S SURREAL (AND QUIET) PERFORMANCE
Well this was...interesting? Infuriating? Pointless? Lamar lay on top of a big glass box containing an expensive-looking sports car. Nothing happened for ages. Some lights came on, but no music did. Eventually, he did start rapping, but it wasn't clear if this was an actual song, or just Lamar doing his thing because there had been some technical hitch. His stream of verbal diarrhoea seemed to wake his mate up who was in the box with the car, and proceeded to start beating the fuck out of the car's windscreen with a bat. There was much muting of Lamar's performance, lest our sensitive ears not be able to take his bad language at nigh on 10pm. It made for a seriously annoying musical interlude, which made me wonder if my TV was functioning properly, such was the frequency of the drop-outs in volume. It raises the age-old question of why the BRITs bothers having rappers on if they are just going to mute 85% of the track. To be fair, you couldn't make out a word Lamar was rapping about anyway, and so the odd 'fuck', 'shit' or reference to cocaine wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference. In fact, I'd say a cheeky line of Colombian might have made the experience all the more refreshing and bearable. 

ALBARN'S PISSED!
Seriously, I'm not totally sure what Blur/Gorillaz/The Good, the Bad & The Queen frontman Damon Albarn was trying to do with his acceptance speech for Best British Group. After taking a rag-bag bunch of people up on stage with him who may or may not have been anything to do with Gorillaz, he seemed to try and start some tirade about either Brexit, the envionment or...something, before he sort of ran out of words and the camera cut back to an ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED Jack Whitehall. Should he interrupt such a God of British music? Was his autocue fucked? Nobody really knew. Some cameraman confusion led to Gorillaz having another go, but apparently with Albarn's bandmates trying to wrestle the mic from him so they could keep the speech relevant to saying thank you's and how blessed they all were, but Albarn was not to be denied. By this point he had completely forgotten what it was he had wanted to say, and the whole thing was really a bit of a shambles. A bit like Gorillaz's last album, really.

STORMZY GETS WET
Stormzy got praise for his performance at the BRITs, which, to be fair, he did try to use for some good - reminding us all that the Grenfell Tower disaster is still "a thing" and that he's still rather angry that nothing has apparently been done. He did this via the traditional BRITs medium of a medley of three songs, and then taking his top off and singing as water cascaded down over him. It was all very worrying though; the thought that he might get electrocuted was never far away from being a real possibility. That's probably the reason he was on last; it wouldn't have been nice for him to perform and then sit there all moist for the rest of the evening.

And there you have it. Jack seemed to be flagging towards the end, and made it known as such. We were right with you, Jack - the ceremony is far too long as it is. Maybe it was me feeling ill at the time, but it did appear to be on for about four hours. Still - the fact Sheeran didn't win any awards was a Godsend; I'm not counting whatever the fuck that hastily prepared one he got given was ('Global Success Award'). I mean, it's in musicians nature to want to be successful, isn't it? They can harp on about having an artistic vision and identity, but ultimately, that ain't gonna pay for your swimming pool. You need something tangible to give people, and that's what Ed has done. The very notion of giving him an award (from a Rolling Stone, no less) for doing his job seems a bit churlish, but there you go. Perhaps next year we'll have an award for someone who released an album over half an hour long, or who got played on Radio 1 or something.

Sounds great, doesn't it?

by P.T. Muscutt