Brand awareness

It's just like the Brits nowadays, or so says popular opinion. Well, only the NME Awards winners' identities will be the judges of that...

Best British band - Arctic Monkeys
Best new band - Arctic Monkeys
They even give their own speeches now, getting to slag off Russell Brand, a deserved recurring theme throughout the night. Alex Turner suggested "who else was going to be Best British Band? You can't write about something that much and not be Best British Band", perhaps giving away too much.

Best Track - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
As covered on the night by the Sugababes, which might qualify as the exact opposite of irony (it sounds like the original, only with slick session men run through ProTools) and opens up a mighty black hole in the time-cover version continuum. We're willing to bet at least one of them had never heard it before.

Best album - Employment
From what we've seen of the NME they appear to have turned their backs on the whole knock 'em down ethos and decided to completely ignore the Kaisers over the last few months.

Best solo artist - Kanye West
Conor McNicholas cares about black people. How he's still in the country given his promo and tour finished last week must have taken a Herculean effort in explanation by his PR, and we wonder just how much of it he understood.

John Peel music innovation award - Gorillaz
The Archies and Jive Bunny prepare sternly worded letters, although the explanatory film suggested it was more to do with the development of the live show, in which case fair enough. And before you argue further, consider this - last year, this award went to The Others.

Best live band - Franz Ferdinand
Yes, Ryan Jarman's back, but let's not overlook Iggy Pop, charged with handing the award over in Australia where both he and Franz are on Big Day Out duty, redesigning the award with the use of an apple, a biro and half a ciggie.

Best video - The Importance Of Being Idle
We don't see them as having turned up, somehow.

Best international band - The Strokes
As we recall, the first voting forms were in the last proper NME before Christmas, meaning a whole year of development was wiped out by the realisation their then new single led with a bass riff this time.

Radar award - Long Blondes
We're fairly cool on ver Blondes, in actual fact - Appropriation was decent enough, but Seperated By Motorways spent its span attempting to find out what a tune is. Good omens, though, as the last four winners of this award were the Coral, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Franz and Kaisers.

Best music DVD - Live 8
This was the lead-in for the Geldof/Brand/"cunt" rapier wit exchange that led to a good seventy hits to this very blog off Google in the 36 hours after the E4 broadcast. To be fair, Brand was rotten, as if on a bet to cram sordid sexual referencing into every award introduction, and Geldof did seem to be sticking to the party line that somehow all those votes counted as a reminder to world governments. We know Tony likes guitar music, but he's probably got other matters to hand than keeping an eye on this.

Best Event - Carling Weekend
Geldof went spare after the awards, by all accounts, claiming this one had been rigged in favour of part-award sponsors Carling. We have heard that Reading And Leeds did have a good year, in fact, but it seemed odd that this massive event would get an award for its selling as consumer goods but not for its actuality. There's something for Mean Fiddler to consider for this year.

Best TV show - Gonzo
Pfffft! At the fifth time of asking, and just as it has two fifths of its weekly time allowance cut, MTV2's supposed flagship beats all manner of higher profile shows to the award.

Best radio show - Zane Lowe
This was inevitable, however, although it is notable that nobody seems to particularly like his style other than industry professionals.

Best film - Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire
What demographic are they aiming at again? Do they really want to admit this in public?

Best Website - NME.COM
Oh for lord's sake. Who really votes for this every year?

Best Venue - Brixton Carling Academy

Hero Of The Year - Bob Geldof
Villain Of The Year - George Bush
Controversial villainy choice there, although it does at least disprove the theory that the NME is now just like Smash Hits as had that been the case Bush would have come second to spiders. Geldof has now, with its own sense of inevitability, been put forward for Nobel honours - bit early, aren't they? - even though not all of Make Poverty History openly see his side of the argument any more.

Best Dressed - Ricky Wilson
Worst Dressed - Justin Hawkins
And with all the work Christian Dior put in for his own favourite bands too.

Worst Album - Back To Bedlam

Worst Band - Son Of Dork
Because it's ex-Busted, or because they play guitars like only punks should do? You might as well give it to Fall Out Boy.

Sexiest Man - Pete Doherty
Fuck, we've been going the smart suit/urbanity route all these years. If we'd known it's a pork pie hat, pallid complexion and general air of car boot sale pro sleeping in his car combination that does it for the ladies...

Sexiest Woman - Madonna
Who in god's name were the other nominees? Kelly Osbourne? Grotbags? Presumably the voting numbers suffered a serious decline when it was realised Lucy Pinder has yet to record any music.

Godlike genius award - Ian Brown
Sweet of him to try and dedicate it to everybody in the world, less welcoming for him to then perform a version of I Wanna Be Adored featuring an intro that lasted about half an hour with a guitar part essayed by someone perhaps under heavy sedition.