Arctic Monkeys Follow Up BRITs Triumph With NME Wins

The lads from Sheffield surprised everyone by scooping the two biggest awards of the night at last week’s BRITs, and now they’ve surpassed that triumph at today’s Shockwaves NME Awards, taking home three gongs. Arctic Monkeys received Best British Band, Best Track (for the superb “Fluorescent Adolescent”), and Best Video (for “Teddy Picker”). They have solidified their dominance of UK music, those boys. Upon winning Best Track, Alex Turner referenced his boozy, aborted acceptance speech at the BRITs: “We’re going to finish the speech we started at the Brits before we were cut off. We’d like to thank our manager Geoff Barradale.“

Klaxons picked up Best Album for Myths of the Near Future, and Kate Nash won Best Solo Artist. Click here for the complete list of honorees.

In other news:

• Prince Harry may have avoided going to Iraq last year, but he’s now serving in Afghanistan and has been since December. The Guardian reports, “The 23-year-old, who is third in line to the throne, has spent the past 10 weeks as a forward air controller (FAC) in the dangerous southern province of Helmand, guiding fighter jets towards suspected Taliban targets. The army – which decided last year it was too dangerous for Harry to serve in Iraq – deployed him to Afghanistan on condition that his whereabouts remained a secret, in case he became a Taliban target.” By the way, this photo is the single hottest photo of the prince I’ve seen. Love the super-manly ginger scruff.
• Boy George pleaded not guilty to cuffing a Norwegian man to a wall and torturing him with sex toys.(E!)
• We could soon know the details of the McCartney-Mills divorce settlement, says the judge.(BBC)
• Cheryl Tweedy Cole is being seen out-and-about without her wedding ring.(The Sun)
• Orlando Bloom‘s Aussie girlfriend says he smells bad. I’d gladly do the honors of bathing him.(Digital Spy)
• How veteran rockers become cool again.(The Times)
• The terminally blond Laurence Fox talks to The Times about the moment he met his wife Billie Piper: “I love the way people go, ‘When you know, you know.’ It’s so true. You just do. You just go, ‘Wow, yeah! Yes please, and thank you.’ And it’s the best. I’m really lucky. We have so much in common that we don’t really row. We occasionally shout at one another but we don’t really row, not really moods, either.”
• A Spanish version of Life On Mars set after the death of Franco is in the works.(The Times)