No Rock And Roll Fun

IVOR THE INGENUE: There's something really sweet about giving the Darkness an Ivor Novello award for songwriters - giving the award to a knees-up merchant rather than a tortured soul is a nice piece of innocent fun, compared with some of the other prizes: Leave Right Now by Will Young was judged to be the best song "musically and lyrically" of last year, although we felt it was a bit like a drudge through some cliches ourselves; Amy Winehouse got the "best contemporary song" prize - but we don't quite understand how Will's song can be the stongest but not the best; we're puzzled as to what sort of scale they're using - "this Amy Winehouse song hasn't got stronger lyrics or music than the Young one, but it's so much better, isn't it?". Radiohead won international achievement (for going a year without complaining) and Mad World picked up best selling single. Dido's White Flag was "international hit of the year" or maybe "international house of pancakes", we were drifting by then; Goldfrapp won the dance award and Holand-Dozier-Holland won a special shiny award for them. Jesus, how could they have a kept a straight face while watching someone pick up a prize for writing "White Flag"?