Last night, BBC1 broadcast an event so joyless, pointless and arse-clenchingly embarrassing that it couldn’t have been more unfortunate if Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood had come out and started Morris dancing with Nigel Farage, Gary Glitter, Ian Brady and Barry Chuckle.
It was called The BBC Music Awards and I urge you to watch it now on iPlayer before someone with sense takes it down and tries to pretend it never happened.
What you will see is one and a half hours of a massive audience of static, baffled people smiling as politely as they can in the face of exquisite charisma-free embarrassment. When Ricky Bloke out of the Kaiser Chiefs got up to sing a song that sounded like the very worst thing James never wrote, all I could feel for him was pity. And I’m sure that’s not the reaction he was looking for when he first sat down to write I Predict A Riot.
Now there’s a man who’s been chewed up and spat out by the 21st century entertainment industry, like a laboratory mouse coaxed from the comfort of its cage with a hollow promise of one day leading the Disneyland parade.
What exactly was The BBC Music Awards trying to be? Bad TV trying to sell bad radio? Light entertainment? Was it supposed to be cool? If so, why was that starving Victorian apology on legs from Strictly Come Dancing introducing it? And what had Fearne Cotton come dressed for? I mean, the Old Grey Whistle Test had its shortcomings, but at least they didn’t get Angela Rippon to introduce it in a sequinned ballgown.
Beset by more technical difficulties than one might expect from an awards show run by the BBC – we PAID for this! – it was amateurish in the extreme. Only one of the awards winners were there, meaning that Robbie Williams and Dirty Spice had to pick the awards up on Adele’s behalf and play the “we’re all big celebrity mates” game. Then there was a performance by Lukas Graham – fronted by a guy who looks like he’s come to quote for a job – that was followed by an interview in which he basically said, “Well, yeah, it’s nice to be here, but I’d rather be at home.”
The audience looked like they agreed. A colleague has just told me that Ricky Wilson once said he would “wank off a tramp” for success.* If they changed the name of The Voice to The Fist and, rather than sing, each contestant had to give a handjob to a tramp, and the judges had to decide whether to turn their chairs purely on the strength of how ecstatic the tramp sounded, I’d watch that.
I’ve got an improved format for what I’m planning to call ‘The XXX Factor’ as well, if Simon Cowell wants to buy me a house.
*I can’t find this exact quote but if you Google ‘Ricky Wilson wank off a tramp’ you get nine results, including The Independent and The Guardian, so it must be true.
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