Brits in pieces

We don't think you can deny that tonight the ambitions of the UK music scene and its televised output got on like a house on fire.

All its possessions were destroyed and it was forced to escape by jumping out of a top floor window.

There's something very Whileyfied about a ceremony that gives the Foo Fighters two awards when even the Eagles seemed a more cutting edge bet. Even besides that, as a basic television spectacle it suffered engine failure on takeoff. The Osbournes, even for a booking made on the basis of a reality TV show of six years ago which was a success due to its extreme dysfunctionality and involving someone who has had live chat shows on both sides of the Atlantic cancelled, flatlined from the off, and nowhere was it stated in the pre-publicity that Kelly (reusing the short, dark haired look Madonna had for about three weeks in 1993) and Jack (just after finding work as a professional Jack Penate lookalike) would be co-presenting. ITV gracefully helped with the lamest swear filter in television history, slowing the video down for a couple of seconds just in case the edit necessity wasn't obvious. Will Young set new standards for bad autocue reading, while Jonathan Rhys Meyers looked like not so much just out of rehab as still in the centre as withdrawl kicks in. David Tennant presenting an award to Kylie? Who'd have thought. Performance wise, the much anticipated Rihanna vs Klaxons turned out to be a mashup straight outta 2002 where neither seemed to know what the other was really doing. Amy was if not all over the shop then certainly indecisive given a choice of aisles, but you expect that at this stage.

The Arctic Monkeys were the great domestic achievers, come in comedy gear which didn't sit well when they were subject to unironic champagne spraying, and Alex hadn't thought his props through. They did however take a full role in the five minutes when the whole edifice crumbled and slowly collapsed, beginning with Vic Reeves wandering on to finish his TV career by being in a public place many, many sheets to the wind with only a vague idea of what he was doing there. When cut back to from the nomination tape, he was embroiled in a spectacularly undignified commotion with an openly abusive Sharon. On pretty much live TV to the nation of millions. What the situation needed was a calming influence: what it got was an even more pissed Alex Turner extemporising, seemingly to himself, about the Brit School and Blazin' Squad until the emergency DAT cut him off. We'd hate to have been the floor manager reading the script that said Ozzy had the next announcement, and sure enough there he was to, Look Around You style, introduce "Mr Sir Paul McCartney" about three minutes early. Macca did Dance Tonight, like anyone cares, and a participatory Hey Jude, but you knew he would.

So what have we learned? The Brits school is now everything, the summit of British music in 2007 is a band that split up in 1996 and you'll never be able to watch Big Night Out in the same way again. All of which leaves one question: who was the bloke behind Kate Nash as she rose from her table, preparing to attempt to introduce the unappreciative Brit School crowd (and her alumni) to Riot Grrl concepts, wearing a crombie hat with some sort of pipe in his mouth, then?