June 12, 2006
AWARDS NEWS
THE CADS 2006: CELEBRITY MESSAGE VIDEO
Last week I hosted the Music Vision Awards 2006, also known as The CADS (which stands for Creative And Design with an ‘S’ at the end). It’s the big pop video awards shaboobah for the UK and it took place at the Hammersmith Palais, which is where I saw my first ever gig. I went to see Prefab Sprout on Monday 18th November 1985 with Joe who got me into the band and we had a good evening although I remember thinking ‘why is it so loud? I can’t hear what he’s singing. Why are they playing all the songs so fast? It sounds much better on the records’ and that’s still pretty much the way I feel about most gigs to this day.
Anyway, the CADS were enjoyable. I had thought that I wouldn’t host any more awards ceremonies after doing the Q Awards with Joe in 2002, which was a drag and we weren’t great at it (I must have said ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ about 1000 times, as a form of nervous punctuation throughout the night) and the Interactive BAFTAS that same year, which was better but still uncomfortable, for me at least. The CADS always seemed like more fun though. For a start it’s not televised which takes the pressure off considerably and it’s for an industry that on the whole I genuinely love and admire, ie. pop videos. Also I wanted to see if I could do it on my own.
For both the BAFTAs and the Q awards I put together a little film to be used as part of our introductory speech and both times they went down well so I thought I’d do the same sort of thing for the CADS. Here’s the fake celebrity messages from people who couldn’t be there that I played at the end of my speech last week. People liked it I think and I got props from Dom & Nick who won a couple of awards for their amazing video for Believe by The Chemical Brothers so I was pleased with myself.
I said ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ too much again though. Basically if I’m doing something live and I’m not in character I get very nervous and turn into a cross between Alan Partridge and Dermot O Leary. It’s bad. I’m getting better though I think. They key is to do more videos and less talking!
Here’s Joe and me about to host the Interactive awards in 2002, coming about as close to a BAFTA as we’re ever likely to.