THE BRITS AS THEY AREN'T HAPPENING

We were going to wait a full 24 hours before even mentioning ITV's coverage of the awards - if they don't feel there's any hurry in getting them on air, then why should we rush to review them? - but the programme is so poor we couldn't contain ourselves. Why do they insist on treating the video to make it look like film? We know it's already stale, but is there any need to make it look even staler than it is?

The Kaiser Chiefs are the perfect choice to start things off - they're exactly the sort of band who sum up the Brits spirit: corporatism dressed up in leisure slacks; the sort of fun you get in those kid's play centres where it all looks like it's wild and carefree, but has actually had any room for originality or real risk health and safetyed out of the place. You could say the same thing about Chris Evans, too, come to think of it.

Although his question fired at Boy George - "did you really call the police when you had ten bags of drugs in your house?" - did seem to genuinely rile O'Dowd, and his comeback - "that was you" - shows that whatever he has been doing over the last ten years, it's blunted his wits pretty comprehensively. And what on earth was that white shit all over his face? If it was meant to try and deflect attention from the fact he now looks like a small face peering out of a very large building, it didn't work. Even more curiously, Kanye West came up to pick his award looking like Fleegle from the Banana Splits.

We're not certain, but we think that the Urban award may have been filmed a year ago - Lemar beating Ms Dynamite and Craig David to be presented with an award by Jamelia? Corrie's bringing back of the bloke who killed Ernie thirty years ago has been quite a success; apparently they've decided to bring back some long-forgotten characters here, too.

And what is that little bit of business before the nominations are read out? Is it meant to be somebody catching pixiedust and blowing it over the event? If we'd been organising a music business event, especially with Ian Blair keen to catch middle-class drug users, we'd not be majoring so much on the suggestion that the industry depends quite so heavily on magic powders.

Update: They might have been better keeping Prince until later in the show - Kelly Clarkson, for all the fun of trying to decide if she was wearing cullotes or pedal pushers, feels like having the karaoke on after you've just had the main act.

Wayne Coyne and Beth Orton have been presenting prizes - perhaps next year they could try letting the researchers who book the presenters select the winners. Because having Wayne Coyne have to give James Blunt a prize is frankly insulting.

Chris Evans does sound more like Alan Partridge every year, doesn't he? And not in a knowing or ironic way.

It's interesting that there was a lot of fuss over Anthony and the Johnsons being nominated for best British male when he's only vaguely British, but nobody seemed that arsed that Is This The Way To Amarillo got shortlisted for best British single on the strength of it being lip-synched in the video by a bloke from Bolton?

Update 2: KT Tunstall - who, for reasons we've lost track of as we flicked over to see Johnny Weir ice-skate in Torino, appears to have Jo Wylie stapled to her shoulder - has picked up her Best British Female award. We say "hers", although all the rules of justice and sense suggest it should be Kate Bush's, of course. She's thanked her record company for "proving a girl can be herself." Providing, of course, herself involves wearing fairly sexy clothing and is pretty and writes non-threatening songs.

Bloody hell, these Mastercard break bumpers are stinkers.

Update 3: Could Madonna's hilarious acceptance speech (you've been inspired by Radiohead and Elvis Costello? In what way?) have been delivered in a more stilting fashion? If we were her press people, we'd be confirming the hernia story and using the post-op drugs as an excuse.

We wonder if Gorillaz knew they weren't winning a prize before they decided to put in less effort than they did for MTV and the Grammys, or if they decided that before the BPI decided to not give them a prize. Honestly... MTV get a 3D state of the art projection; the Brits get a few kids rounded up the childcatcher.

And we don't know who thought it might be worth getting Peter Kay to do half the voiceovers, but when you've got a distinctive voice like that, why give him a bogstandard undistinguished script to read? It's like calling in Larry Olivier to do a DFS advert.