`It's the most unrock 'n' roll event I've ever been at in all my life," was the considered opinion of one seasoned hack backstage at the MTV awards last night. The assembled European media had been corralled into a room behind the main stage, and each time an act won an award, they were sent into said room to answer a barrage of questions from the hack-pack.
Which is all very well if you're going to find out whether or not Britney Spears is, in fact, a battery operated doll, or Marilyn Manson is, in real life, using his records sales money to put himself through accountancy school. But no, the most incisive questions of the night were along the lines of "Are you enjoying Ireland?" followed swiftly by "Why are you so wonderful?"
The awards were organised right down to the last ad-lib. They are a corporate, sales-boosting, clap-ourselves-on-the-back event. And judging by last night's performance, new levels of banality were scaled. A small army of MTV operatives kept drip-feeding "interesting facts and statistics", to wit: the Dublin awards ceremony was the biggest in the six-year history of MTV Europe; potentially (a much abused work this last week) one billion people could watch the awards live; two million punters voted; there were 22 live performances; 1,200 staff and crew were at the Point.
And still the award winners kept on coming. Britney Spears told us how "happy and surprised" she was to win an award, sentiments echoed by every other act/solo performer who won a gong. And still they kept on asking them "Are you enjoying Ireland?", maybe in the forlorn hope that one of the acts would say "No, it's an awful dump". The only bit of light relief came when Mick Jagger, in awarding Bono his Free Your Mind award, referred to His Bononess's "virtual sainthood", which had a few of us spilling our beer. The only interesting fact to emerge from the whole evening came from the Italian band, Elio e le Storie Tese, who, when asked the constitutional question "How are you enjoying Ireland?", replied "is very nice, but please in the Dublin restaurant you must to remember to cook the spaghetti for only eight minutes, not 20". Ben detto.
