I'm stuck on your heart, I hang on every word you say

I watched the Brit Awards last night. I'm not really sure why. Although I like watching award shows, I get annoyed with the Brits usually. The awards either go to people I dislike or else it smacks of tokenism.

And bearing this in mind, it didn't disappoint. I was able to predict all of the winners, bar two. Should it really be this obvious?

The Brits always seem to be a step behind. It's like they suddenly realise "ooh, Elbow are a good worthy band, we'd best demonstrate that we realise this and give them best band". Now, this is perhaps an unfair example. I like Elbow (and have already said how I came to them fairly recently, so I am not pulling a "oh, I was there at the beginning") and was very pleased that they won. I think they deserve. But I am always deeply suspicious when the mainstream suddenly embrace something. It's the same as when they think "oh, someone's a bit kooky, let's honour them to show how hip we are".

And when they are not suddenly deciding to honour someone who had previously not crossed their radar, they pick on an artist that they have decided is worthy and pile multiple awards on them. They did it with Blur, they did it, inexplicably, with the Darkness (and how embarrassed must they be about that now), and they did it last night with Duffy. I neither like nor dislike Duffy - I find her voice a bit grating, but she seems nice and talented enough. And again, I'm not really saying that she shouldn't have won. But it all just seemed so obvious. Perhaps that is the way it should be tho'. The prize is for the best example of the category, not for the least obvious. And maybe it's just that I don't really like most of the music that is nominated. Still, at least they manage to be sensible about the awards they have to give, unlike the Grammys who seem to have a category for every imaginable genre and sub genre. I know that it can seem like an impossible task to compare wildly disparate genres, but I would hate to see us go down the "best vocal performance of a rock song with a middle eight, written on a Friday by a man named Keith, and performed by a female with blonde hair and blue eyes" route.

But I think what annoys me most of all is the ceremony, and here is where they could learn from the Grammys. Don't have the public there. Last night's ceremony was hosted by James Corden and Matthew Horne (and Kylie Minouge), and by and large they did a good job I thought. But lots of the jokes that they made were just lost and drowned out by the shrieking and screaming of the public who were at the ceremony and consequently ended up falling flat, with awkward silences. Get rid of them I say. What's wrong with just having an awards ceremony with the people who have been nominated there, plus others in the same field? It would also cut out some of the embarrassing attempts by some of the people presenting awards to "talk to the people".

And don't get me started about how out of tune Girls Aloud were. Annoyingly, that stupid song was stuck in my head all day.