Brits 2015: Hosts announced

Exciting news - the hosts of next year's Brits have been announced.

It's Ant And Dec.

Sorry... I think I've got confused; that must be an old news story from the time when CD:UK was on the television. Obviously Ant And Dec wouldn't be hosting the Brits in 2015. That'd be absurd.





Oh.




Hang on.

Brits chairman Max Lousada said it was "a real honour" to have them back.

"Ant and Dec are two of the most popular TV broadcasters this country has ever produced," he said.

"It's great that these two pillars of British TV will be part of a night about celebrating icons in British music."

There's a slim justification for this booking tied to the charts:

The return of Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly comes in the wake of them reaching number one last year with Let's Get Ready to Rhumble - a re-release of their 1994 hit.

That's true. But I'm not sure a novelty hit in 2013 is quite the cutting edge happening to build an event around in 2015.

More to the point, that a twenty year-old joke that wasn't funny anymore steamrollered its way to outsell all the other music around that week doesn't really send the 'British music is creative, vibrant and modern' message that the Brits is supposed to be sharing with the world.

I suppose we should be grateful that Mike Read already had a corporate gig booked for that night.

The illustrated Friends: Michael Miles

Let's get back to the people Adam Ant claims to be Friends of his. If you're just joining us, this is what it's all about.

Next up is Michael Miles. Given the song was released in 1979, a year after Halloween came out, casual listeners might have assumed that the guest list had found space for this chap:

But, in fact, Adam was chumming up to Michael Miles, former host of Take Your Pick. By the time of the song, Miles was already starting to drift away from the public consciousness - Take Your Pick was as far in the past from Friends as Going For Gold was in the future. But the format - and, in particular, the Yes/No interlude - never quite vanishes.

Miles had a crappy hand dealt him: Take Your Pick was dropped because the company that made it lost its ITV franchise; he suffered from epilepsy and, ashamed of his condition, would lock himself in his dressing room. That, though, just created rumours that he was an alcoholic. He died in 1971.

But can we find a tenuous bit of music? We had Mr Pastry dancing; we had an Adam Ant song directly inspired by Allen Jones. Surely there must be something?

Well... kind of. Take Your Pick was revived twice - once for a full series, hosted by Des O'Connor...

... and once, as a one-off as part of ITV's Gameshow Marathon. Hosted by Ant and Dec. Let's prove there is a downward spiral from Des, shall we?


[Buy: Des O'Connor - Inspired
PJ And Duncan - aka Psyche]
[Part of the illustrated Friends]

Gordon in the morning: First discs

Lucky for Gordon, his copy of Q has turned up, giving him the chance to "report" on its contents. To mark 25 years of the magazine, they've asked people about their first single. Alex Turner attempted to make some sort of point:

"I think it was a cassette single and if it wasn't Let's Get Ready To Rhumble it might have been Edwyn Collins' A Girl Like You.

"The new generation have got it easy now. You'll ask some kid and because of downloading it will be Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures.

"I'd like to be able to say that but it probably was Let's Get Ready To Rhumble. Actually, it might have been Zig and Zag... "

It's an interesting reaction - in fact, you might ask with downloading and streaming, will Q be able to ask the same question in 25 years time in any meaningful way - but Gordon can't get past PJ And Duncan:

NEXT time Arctic Monkeys are asked to do a cover, they should go for one of the first songs frontman Alex Turner ever bought –

Alex confessed the song that saw Geordies Ant & Dec "wreck the mic" was an early feature in his music collection.

There's even a clunking headline:

Alex Turner, are you Geordie sure?

To which the answer is, er, no: clearly he's saying he isn't sure what his first single was, if you mean 'are you sure this was your first single'; or, yes, he's sure he bought it, if you meant that.

But then, writing a scoffing article about how embarrassing an early single purchase was when the subject was trying to illustrate that very idea seems confused enough without the headline.

Elsewhere, Gordon takes one for the team, writing a piece plugging his bosses' Sky Living Steps Reunion series:

STEPS have revealed one of the reasons for their bitter split ten years ago — BRITNEY SPEARS.

The band's Ian "H" Watkins hit it off with the singer when they supported her Baby One More Time tour in the US during 1999.

He began flying to venues in the star's private jet while his bandmates slummed it on a bus.

That doesn't really sound like Britney Spears was the "reason" for the split, but to be fair, if Gordon didn't stick Spears into the headline, the story would probably have got as many readers as the Steps series will have viewers.

PJ (or was it Duncan) misses out

With all the horrors of the modern world, thank God the BBC keeps a sense of perspective:

TV star Declan Donnelly misses England World Cup goal

It's hard to believe, isn't it?

TV star Declan Donnelly was amongst hundreds of football fans in London who missed England's all-important World Cup goal after a power cut.

You see, Duncan (or was he PJ?) has to be like the rest of us when the electricity stops flowing. But still gets the top billing on the news report. The other hundreds? Well, they've never been in Byker Grove, have they?

Ant And Dec blame other people for Susan Boyle

Ant And Dec have popped up at the Edinburgh TV Festival to defend the way Britain's Got Talent gave Susan Boyle a breakdown:

"What would you then do, start censoring people because they won't be able to handle the fame and attention as well as you think they should?" McPartlin told the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival today.

"You can't stop people coming on the show … just because they don't handle it in the way we expect them to. It doesn't mean it's wrong.

"Susan Boyle performed three times on the show. The show didn't camp paparazzi outside her house, the show didn't put it in the newspapers. I personally believe that every care was taken with Susan Boyle and they looked after her very well indeed."

So, somehow, there's no reason for Simon Cowell and his chums to feel in any way responsible for putting the woman into a position where she had the paparazzi outside her house and was in every newspaper?

Do Ant (left) and Dec (right) really think that we're so ignorant that we'll believe that, left to them, and Cowell, and ITV, there'd be nothing in the papers about BGT; that when the TV programme gets in the news they feel that it's a violation of their performers rather than massive acres of free publicity for their show? That the network and the production doesn't rely on it being in all the papers? That there's a team of PR people whose job is to get the show into all the papers?

That's probably the greatest insult to our nation's collective intelligence since, ooh, ITV tried to tell us we shouldn't blame Ant And Dec for the fleecing of phonevoters as their "producer" credits didn't really mean they'd know what was going on.

Darkness at 3AM: They've got the other one

Hey, if Gordon is putting the weight of Bizarre behind one of Ant and Dec, isn't that an unfair fight? How can Dec hope to compete unless he, too, can have some awkward, badly posed photographs with clunking gossip columnists?

Phew. Thank god for the 3AM Girls, rising to the occasion with not just an awkward shot, but one that is out of focus and features a guy who we spent some time peering at before we realised he was meant to be a George Michael lookalike.

Gordon in the morning: Your cut-out-and-throw-away guide to the Brits

It's Brits day, the most important day in the year for record company executives and Gordon has published a small guide to everything you need to know.

Like Coldplay being involved, for example. That tells you all you need to know.

Coldplay are thinking of doing something nice for their fans. Chris Martin is worried about the high cost of tickets:

“What we want to do is try to giveaway a live album for free.

“We’re playing a lot of shows in the summer and I think what we would like to do is — bearing in mind the recession we are in — record the live album then give it as a gift.

Advertisement

“We are just trying to work out how to do that.

“It’s obviously a bit tricky in terms of record contracts and things but it would be great.

“It’s a way of saying thank you.

“It’s a tough economy and people are paying a lot of money for tickets.

“We are trying to work out a way that, when you hand your ticket in at the door, you get given the recording.

“It would be such a cool thing to do.

“We just feel really grateful at the moment for all the support we get from our fans.”

Actually, that is quite a nice gesture, but to be honest: if you're worried that your fans are paying a large price for tickets for the gig, why not just drop the ticket price?

You know who the real losers will be, though? The poor music lovers who've been dragged to a Coldplay gig by loved ones or children who actually like the band and will not only have to sit through a show, but will have an album of live Coldplay foisted on them, too.

Coldplay's life right now? It's crazy, right Chris?

Chris adds: “We are touring until November. We fly straight to Australia after the Brits, which is crazy."

God, yeah. That's absolutely crazy. Getting into a plane and flying across to do some work in a foreign country. It's not like people in every field of business do that every day, is it?

With a straight face, the Kings Of Leon try to pretend that the Brits mean more to them than The Grammys:

Frontman Caleb says: “We always knew The Brits was the Grammys of the UK. So we basically knew that was our Grammy. It was always the biggest shot that we had."

Actually, that sounds more like they'd assumed the qualifying bar had been set lower for winning a Brit. Still, it's nice that Caleb knows to flatter the provincial audience.

It's funny that one-third of Gordon's Brit coverage is handed over to the Kings Of Leon, though - wasn't Gordon saying just the other day how there's so much major British talent you can hardly find space to fit it all in?

The Pet Shop Boys interview is palmed off to Chris Stroud - somehow, had Gordon written it, I doubt you'd have got a plug for the Friendly Fires in there. And you can't go wrong with Neil and Chris:

Singer Neil, 54, explains: “Chris never usually gets excited about awards. When we won for West End Girls, he watched the event from the comfort of his living room.

“He’s coming this time, though. If you’ve got the entire music industry saying they quite like what you’ve done over the years, you can’t be too cynical.”

Chris, 49, says: “I thought they only gave this kind of award to rock bands.

“It was a real surprise. But it’s also our silver jubilee this year. So I reckon we should stage some street parties to mark the occasion.”

Gordon, meanwhile, is sticking himself in the middle of his story about Ant and Dec releasing 'competing' charity singles for charity. The pair are trying to help out cash-strapped ITV, and raise awareness of the plight of a channel too often ignored in these days of well-crafted entertainment. "It's all too easy to turn away from ITV, especially when times are hard and you feel you've heard all their stories too many times. We just want people to give them a second chance" explained Ant.

Gordon's teamed up with Ant, or possibly Dec, to throw his support behind his record rather than Dec's. Or possibly Ant's. It's not like he's been assigned one by the PR team, though. Oh, no:

Dec is a good man, but he lost the vote of me and every other bloke in the UK when he started dating Sky Sports stunner GEORGIE THOMPSON.

"Oh, yes, I shan't be buying that young man's charity record, as he has apparently had a date with somebody I've never heard off from the football programme."
Here's Gordon and TV's Ant "at Bizarre HQ". Gordon is explaining the ancient craft of journalism to Dec - "and then you click on the little pair of scissors, and then come back here and click on the pot of glue, and change all the bits where it says 'Heat has been told' to 'I, Gordon, have been told'..."

Robbie Williams is not giving a prize to Catherine Tate

Micheal Grade has insisted that none of the shady work done by ITV when fleecing its viewers was done intentionally to simply make money. It was all about making the programmes better - misguided enthusiasm rather than criminal deception.

Oh, really? What about the Robbie Williams incident? Williams said, grandly, that he'd turn up to present a prize at the 2005 British Comedy Awards. Providing, of course, that he was giving a prize to his old chums Ant and Dec.

Now, it's arguable that people at ITV really do believe that Robbie Williams handing a chunk of plastic to his old chums Ant and Dec is the sort of televisual feast that cannot be turned down. They may also think it's appropriate that Robbie Williams should be dictating who wins what at the Comedy Awards, even the people's choice awards. But in what sense would anyone think that having a fake phone-in vote that was going to have no outcome over the eventual winner of the prize would "add" to the programme? Did someone really sit at a production meeting and say "you know what, this show would be even more fun for the audiences if they could dial up and give us money during the course of it?"

In effect, it's actually more comforting to think that ITV really were setting out to defraud its viewers - because it'd be better to think that the network sees its audience as schmucks and marks rather than idiots who need to be given an empty opportunity to press buttons on a telephone to stimulate their short attention spans.

Robbie Williams' old chums Ant and Dec have said they'll give their award back. It might be nice if there was a ceremony in which Robbie Williams takes the prize back. Perhaps it could be on a tumbrel.

Darkness at 3AM

The Mirror has been very excited about this morning's relaunch of the 3AM Column, headed up by Danielle Lawler, who had lasted about a week in Gordon Smart's 'cabinet' over at The Sun and Clemmie Moodie (whose name sounds like an exercise set by a speech therapist). It was trailed as a first taste of what the new, modern, redesigned Mirror is going to feel like, but it doesn't (online at least) have very much of a different feel. And the content? As far as you can judge, it's same old same old.

Although it is difficult to tell for sure, as today's column is all about the new 3AM girls, making the same mistake Gordon did when he took over: assuming readers give half a honk about the people who filter this stuff.

So, we discover that Danielle's first album was Kick by INXS:

Kick by INXS. At least it wasn't Jason Donovan!

while Clementine Tangerine's was, inevitably, Jason Donovan.

Naturally, a bunch of PR staff have ghostwritten welcome messages from their charges - but even then, it's quite a poor selection: Kelly Osbourne, Leon Jackson, Leona Lewis, Ant and Dec and Simon Cowell. Even if you can get over the wonder that all the well-wishes have come from people connected with Cowell's Saturday night talent shows, you'd have to say that this is a bit weak. No Madonna, not even a Daniel Craig? Instead, they're relaunching with warm words from Leon Jackson, a man who couldn't even remember his own name if 'who won the X Factor in 2007' came up on the pub quiz machine.

Even the wicked whispers are about them:

Which showbiz columnist kissed a very un-single Hollywood actor in a trendy Portuguese nightclub? The love-rat didn't say he was taken...

Unless that was Gordon. It couldn't have been Gordon, could it?