Award ceremony season continued in full red-carpet flourish with last Tuesday’s Brit Awards. It was hosted by Peter Kay, which probably tells you everything you need to know. In a somewhat desperate attempt at sexual titillation, this year’s Awards have been billed as the “battle of the babes,” mainly because female musicians picked up several nominations.

Who set up this false rivalry between anybody with a microphone and a vagina? You never see metal fans screech, “Axl Rose can’t exist because James Hetfield did it better. Anyway, Hetfield has a better beard!” You also never hear anyone say, “Why don’t you do something more meaningful than argue over pop?” This is possibly because nobody wants to piss off anybody whose idea of a good time is wading into a moshpit and breaking someone’s nose while wailing “MAAASTER OF PUPPETS”. We suspect this might also have something to do with the fact that pop is traditionally seen as the superficial, female-friendly cousin to more rated genres like rock, which takes itself so seriously that bands like Kasabian consider strutting on a stage surounded by over-enthusiastic fire troughs to be the height of musical performance.

At least Liam Gallagher has embraced the fact that rock has disappeared up its own arse: he asked an interviewer backstage to take Class A drugs with him. The interviewer also happened to be his wife, Nicola Appleton. “Live forever,” he shouted from the podium, as Oasis picked up the award for Best Album of 30 Years, resembling a middle-aged lesbian with a bad haircut. Really, Liam, let’s not.

But if there’s one thing the Brit Awards excels at, it’s at showing how better America is at this sort of thing. The main Awards highlights came courtesy of musicians from across the pond: Alicia Keys and Jay-Z’s energetic duet on ‘New York State of Mind’ and Lady Gaga’s sombre performance, which she dedicated to Alexander McQueen. Britain’s contribution to musical history was Cheryl Cole not quite miming along in time to the words (in fairness, she’s had a rough week) and a video appearance by Prince Harry (a.k.a. the not-balding one) dutifully reading off an autocue about the Brit Awards charity, and JLS winning two awards. A band from X Factor, an ITV reality show, picking up prizes from the Brit Awards, an ITV awards show? Well, that’s just inconceivable. They really beat the odds to come this far.

The general effect of this juxtaposition is one not unlike the emotions roused by the Trainspotting scene in which Ewan McGregor, gazing upon the comely hinterlands of Scotland, rages thus (we’ve adjusted it slightly for our purposes): “It’s shite being in British music! We’re the lowest of the low. The most pastiche-ridden, X Factor obsessed trash ever shat into civilisation. Some hate Americans. I don’t. At least the Americans would never have nominated Keane for Best Album of 30 Years.”

Lady Gaga swept the awards with 3 nods. We applaud her. Anybody who turns up to a mainstream awards ceremony dressed like the bastard lovechild of a meringue and a feather-duster deserves everything she gets – even if she did have to receive one from Jonathan Ross, who was dressed in what passes for ‘street wear’ around the Ross household: baggy jeans, a bowler hat, and a denim shirt last seen on your embarrassing great-uncle, the colour-blind one with chronic flatulence.

So kudos to Lily Allen, who spent the entire night suitably pissed, entered the stage aloft on a glittery nuclear missile, giggled her way through her rendition of ‘The Fear’ and then tried to hide from the roving cameramen in an orange wig. Only she truly understood the ridiculousness of the Brit Awards.