spectacles of the type Morrissey wore before he threw his arms around Paris and got his eyes lasered. Nice to see them finally dressing as intellectuals.

• Just take a moment to think about the sheer boredom that attends the voting process for all awards. It’s not like the 'industry insiders' place their votes right there at the exit doors of the cinema or gig, dazed with wonder, their fingers numbly texting friends, urging them to join the revolution. Films are sent to the judges homes on DVD, CDs for the music awards, boxes of books for literary awards. Just imagine the piles to get through, the profoundly inconvenienced expressions, the sly fast forwarding, the missing of whole sections of the plot, or songs, when the pizza or curry arrives. Just imagine the piles occasionally falling, like the ruins of Pompeii.

At least with the Oscars some serious consideration goes into itA friend of mine actively dreads the arrival of the annual Bafta voting form - a huge and arduous document. "Best cinematographer…." she sighs, sucking a biro. "Hmmmm…." And I know a literary editor who regularly has to consider 150 books a year for awards, who says he knows within the first five pages whether to bother continuing or not ("How many great books aren't great in the first five pages?") I used to review films, and after several years on the job became convinced I had developed a sixth sense and knew what to say by the end of the opening credits at the very latest.

At least with the Oscars you sense that some serious consideration has gone into this - even if they do get everything wrong. When anyone ever mentions the phrase "Members of the Academy" I always think of very old sound editors high in the Hollywood hills who haven't been seen since the wrap party for Risky Business because they've been stuck in their private screening rooms quibbling over this or that technical achievement. Was there ever a more oleaginous phrase, a phrase more extraordinarily flattering in the whole of the English language, than for your consideration? One can almost imagine it on a little plaque on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

• Bono: "I don't want to talk about the wars between the nations." The most

dishonest line in a U2 song to date?

• Usually, musicians are even worse flatterers than film stars when accepting awards - the fawning over this producer or that session musician: everyone behind them an unsung genius. But at the Brits 2009 nobody even had a go at saying anything other than I love you, Mum. Katy Perry actually admitted she only came because she was reassured "something good would happen". And Paul Weller didn't even pretend to be abroad! He accepted his award in what was clearly an English pub. I got the distinct impression he was in Marylebone.

• But at least, because of the general brevity we were spared too much of Elbow at the podium being 'humble'.

• The Brits have never been cool and never will be. Even the word Brit is profoundly uncool - wildly defensive, it eternally conjures Gerry Halliwell sewn into a Union Jack tea towel. It's too nervous an award - not sure of what it stands for. The black artists get siphoned off to the Mobos, the really 'good' people get the Mercury. The feeling persists that to lay one's hands on a Brit is bad luck - put your hand on Britannia and you've sold out. To actually win is worse than to lose. It may help with your sales, but it's naff. It's Richard and Judy's book club. Which is why there is always, always, a little pulse of terror in the air that people might get up to the podium and say "yeah, whatever" - and not be arsed with any of it.