The Brits and that Ziggy Stardust costume

The Mail looks surprisingly like...

...the Star, down to the same error

When it comes to production few can match the Daily Mail. The level of precision and control is extreme. But even the Mail's arch-professional design and picture teams slipped up today - in common with the Times, the Star and the i.

The Times's single page was nicely done - if only
someone had looked at that Bowie picture

It was the natural backbench request. Kate Moss turns up to represent David Bowie in a Ziggy Stardust jumpsuit. We obviously want to see what it looked like on Bowie. The Mail, Star, i and Times all picked the same contrast picture. But didn't anyone look at it? The big bunny on Kate's left hip is on Bowie's right. Assuming that it was genuinely the same costume, the Bowie photograph must have been flipped. Not by the papers to suit design purposes, but by whoever used the archive picture they fell upon.
The big-selling redtops avoided the trap. The Mirror, below left, chose a different, though inferior, comparison picture and the Sun, right, used the same one the right way round (which is just as well, since it was on the front and inside).

The O2 provided front-page pictures for most papers - the Sun splashed on Bowie's appeal to the Scots to stay in the UK - and the pops all followed up with two spreads, one for fashion and one for gossip. 

The Mirror, rather surprisingly, put its elegant frocks and suits feature on 2 and 3, above, and consigned the winners list to the bottom right-hand corner of its usual 3am showbiz spread, which was given over to the Brits. 
The Sun, below, ran consecutive spreads from page 6, which meant that the awards took five of the first nine pages. That's the sort of saturation coverage upfront that you expect for a big story, not a set piece. Neither spread was particularly pretty or particularly witty, although the headline on the second was sweet, given Alex Turner's rambling acceptance speech. And the winners' list was given proper display. Apologies for the poor quality of these pictures.

The Star, below, took the same approach as the Mirror, but the other way round, with straight news about the awards up front and the frocks on the centre spread. The winners list was prominent and easy to read. It also focused on the winners for its first spread rather than glitzier people who happened to be there. Not a bad job - apart from the Bowie blunder - all in all.

The Mail restricted itself to one spread and didn't give a hoot for who won. Ellie Goulding was on the front and that was enough winners for the ed. After that it was a couple of mugshots for Bowie and Alex Turner and then straight into the fashion and gossip. The result was rather unsatisfactory. It was perfectly workmanlike, but it didn't have the Mail zing. The best bit was the back to back of The Voice 'rivals' Jessie J and Kylie. I preferred the Times (near the top of this post).

After that it all becomes a bit dismal. The Express put Kylie on the front when common sense dictated that it had to be either Ellie Goulding for looks, Kate Moss or Bowie for Ziggy effect, or an Arctic Monkey or 1D for winning two gongs. To choose Kylie in PVC is almost perverted.
Inside, it made even more of a mess of it, choosing a second picture of Ms Minogue with her sister, Myleene Klass and Jessie J and a cutout of Bowie. Four onlookers and one winner. And all of this was shoved on top of a Madeleine story, complete with mandatory mugshot, and an ad with yet another face. Oh dear.

The Express marries four onlookers with Madeleine and an air hostess

Winners? There's no room for them in the Telegraph, apart from Ellie Goulding

Small and imperfectly formed coverage from the i. Liam Gallagher? Give us a break

The Telegraph and the i were even worse. The lineup of women across the Telegraph's page 3 have no scale or sense. They just don't work together at all. 
It does include Ellie Goulding, second left, but Kate Moss is almost invisible with the microphone, winner's card and the award itself. 
If you wanted to use Kylie and Danni together, they had to be given twice the space. Kylie may be tiny, but she's not half the size of Moss or Goulding. 
And who is this woman on the left? A model called Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who is, according to that fount of wisdom Wikipedia, best known for modelling for Victoria's Secret and Burberry - and now, presumably, for being four times the size of the Minogues. 
Oh, and it would be nice if the Tel told us who'd won the other prizes.
The i meanwhile goes for a static photo of Liam Gallagher looking an idiot alongside Kate Moss. It also ran the back-to-front Bowie picture, but at least it had the sense not to show the telltale bunny in its tiny circle. Again no winners.

No we don't need token women, but some young dudes would have been nice

And the Indy gives us neither glamour nor Bowie. What's going on here?

And so finally to the 'serious' arts papers, the Guardian and Independent, which both fail for taking themselves and the event too seriously. 
The Brits are a bit of nonsense. Nobody has yet worked out the right way to project them.  Last year they were 'too staid', so this year Arctic Monkeys were asked to make it more rock 'n' roll. Does a boozy acceptance speech count? 
James Corden has been host  for five years now and still hasn't got his head round it - although he's improved since he dumped Gavin and stopped cutting off the winning speeches. And he's light years better than the horror that was Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood. 
We've had Prescott and Chambawamba and Michael Jackson and Jarvis Cocker, but still nothing has stirred it up. 
Is it glamour is it music? It's neither, it's tacky. It's the Grammys TOWIE style. 
So dull pictures of Alex Turner with a guitar and screeds of text don't cut it. 
Josh Halliday and Adam Sherwin are both nice writers. But who wants to read an essay of 1,000 words plus on this? 
The Brits don't define British music or even come close. So get over yourselves and show your readers the frocks and the flesh.

---