Brits 2015: Cloaking dragged her

It was the thud that was heard around the world, and the music industry of the United Kingdom is waking up to the realisation that everything it has to offer was upstaged by pratfall.

That's except for readers of The Times, though:

Perils of early deadlines: Will Hodgkinson has reviewed the #BRITs2015 rehearsal for The Times pic.twitter.com/SE7GXVwGeD

— Michael Moran (@TheMichaelMoran) February 26, 2015

There's something of an ethical conundrum here. She is a woman in late middle age who had quite a heavy fall, which isn't funny. But on the other hand, Madonna clearly doesn't want the world to think of her as a woman in late middle age, which might make it okay to giggle a little bit.

Thank god she wasn't doing one of her great songs when it happened, though.

That panic in her face as she tried to shrug off the cloak was clearly less about falling hard, as looking a bit of a twit on live TV. ("Kanye had flame throwers, he was safe. Paloma mixed water and electricity, she was safe. And I've got a glorified pacamac and it's going to bring me down.")

She might take some comfort, though, in the first thought of some - as BBC News reported - was of the impossibility of this being a mistake, because, well, she's Madonna:

Well, sitting way up in the balcony seats among some of Madonna's biggest fans - the type who know and sing along with every lyric - the initial thought was that it may have been a particularly well orchestrated dance manoeuvre.

Consider the evidence - she fell on the lyric "I let down my guard, I fell into your arms" and was back on her feet to sing purposely "now that it's over, I'm going to carry on".

The truth later emerged but credit to the showbiz trooper for carrying on. In the words of those other Brit Award history-makers Chumbawamba "I get knocked down but I get up again".

There is one other upside: eleven years on from Janet Jackson at the Superbowl, now we finally know what a wardrobe malfunction really looks like.