And Finally Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #99: Adele v ITV

By | Published on Friday 24 February 2012

Adele

What else could the Beef Of The Week be this week? A beef so huge that it made the front page of The Sun two days in a row. I refer, of course, to ITV’s decision to boot Adele off the BRITs stage midway through her acceptance speech for the Best British Album award.

It was Adele’s second award of the night, she having already picked up the Best Female Solo Artist prize earlier on (at which point James Corden called her “one successful tranny” – though no one seemed to notice). Damon Albarn had already messed up the schedule by delivering a very long and tedious acceptance speech for Blur’s Outstanding Contribution To Music award, and with the band due to play three songs before the News At Ten began, Adele needed to be stopped. Or so decided ITV.

Corden sidled up to the singer in mid-flow, and apologised as he told her she needed to stop speaking. Adele in response threw her middle finger in the air. Afterwards, she was keen to stress that this gesture was directed at “the suits” at ITV, saying: “It wasn’t to my fans. I’m sorry if I offended anyone, it was the suits that offended me”.

For his part, James Corden told The Sun that he’d wanted no part in ushering her off stage, but was told he had to. Speaking to The Sun, he said: “I was so upset I didn’t even watch Blur. I went straight backstage and spoke to her. I just wanted to say ‘I’m so sorry, if I had it my way…’ – but unfortunately you can’t make those calls. It would have been a wonderful TV moment for Adele to have her moment in the sun and say what she had to say”.

He continued: “Just after Adele said thank you, people were saying: ‘You have to go on now. You have to do it now’. I said: ‘How can we cut her off?’ It was such a surreal moment, all you can hear is five people in your ear having an argument and there’s one overriding voice saying: ‘James you have to’. It’s a shame but it’s a live show and what can you do? It’s one of those things”.

Not everyone was convinced it was “just one of those things”, though. With Albarn allowed to ramble on at length, and Adele booted off so that he could get back on stage again, Lily Allen tweeted: “That was a joke [but] I can’t say I’m surprised. It was like the music industry’s attitude to women played out as a metaphor”.

ITV also received 170 complaints and issued a statement saying: “The BRITs is a live event. Unfortunately the programme was over-running and we had to move on. We would like to apologise to Adele for the interruption”.

A BRITs spokesman also added: “We regret this happened and we send our deepest apologies to Adele that her big moment was cut short this evening due to the live show over-running. We don’t want this to undermine her incredible achievement in winning our night’s biggest award. It tops off what’s been an incredible year for her”.



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