THE TELEVISION was on last night when the much vaunted Brits awards were being shown, and although I was actually writing a post on the Vancouver Olympics at the time, I was aware of what was going on in the background.

I’m not a telly person, indeed I only got a set recently, and it’s rarely switched on because the fabulous new digital signal is so poor that most channels are unwatchable most of the time. (Well done the BBC. Worth every cent of the £140+ licence fee. NOT)

I’ve never been keen on watching overpaid performers, who already think that they are god’s gift to humankind, getting all emotional and “oh god, oh god, I don’t know what to say” ish, when they clearly either knew there was a good chance, or were certain, they would get an award, and therefore do know exactly what to say... because they have been practising it for days.

Of course like everyone else, I’ve seen the highlights of Oscar or Bafta ceremonies on the news and been embarrassed by the tears and drama, and the thanking everyone and everything in the world, when all the time they were thinking to themselves that it was THEM and them alone who had got this bauble.

So, anyway, I come to my point. What a tawdry, second rate bunch of no-hopers they all were. The only person with the remotest talent or a voice was Robbie Williams, and even he lost us in some mind-blowingly boring musical piece that seemed to go on for 3 months. Most of the rest of them looked like they were at a fancy dress ball and had come as bags of rags (did you see JonathonRoss?) and the ones that performed were lip synching and even at that they were flat.

This is what passes for talent in the land that produced The Beatles and The Stones, Dusty Springfield, Status Quo, Rod Stewart, Queen, Petula Clark, Marc Bolan, David Essex, Queen, Elton John, Ian Dury, The Police, Coldplay.... the list of talent is endless.

What we were treated to was a cringingly awful display of mediocrity, drunkenness and ignorance. Noel Gallagher’s idiotic and childish behaviour, and the retort from Peter Kay, on mic, that he (Gallagher) was a knobhead, reduced the whole thing to farce, but not funny farce. It was the kind of amateur entertainment you get in a down at the heal local on a karaoke night.

British pop music is something that once we could have been proud of. The 60s invasion, band pop, the new romantic movement, punk, new wave, and a second British invasion of the early 80s, have been replaced with this bunch of third raters.... So something else we used to be good at, and are now laughably bad at. How sad.