Grammys vs. BAFTAs: Where Did Britons Fare Better?

Yesterday was a great day for British entertainment: the BAFTAs and the Grammys were both handed out last night, and Brits took home loads of trophies on both sides of the pond. At the BAFTAs in London, Slumdog Millionaire nearly swept all of its categories, winning seven gongs. Double nominee Kate Winslet managed not to split her vote and won Best Actress for The Reader. (She also managed not to cry.)

In Los Angeles at the Grammys, Robert Plant and his American collaborator Alison Krauss received five awards, including Album and Record of the Year. Coldplay won four, including Song of the Year for “Viva La Vida” (and, apparently, they avoided being issued a summons onstage). Best New Artist Adele, Estelle, and Duffy won four awards between them, and Radiohead, who did an amazing performance of “15 Step” with the USC marching band, won two. Moreover, Sir Paul McCartney received one of the biggest standing ovations of the night when he performed The Beatles‘ “I Saw Her Standing There” with Dave Grohl on drums.

And finally, Britons can take comfort that neither Katy “Banana Rocket” Perry or Chris “Ike Turner” Brown are from the UK, and thus, did not bring shame and disrepute upon the nation. Damn, it’s good to be British.

In other news:

• Duffy says she never knew what the Grammys were until recently. That’s OK, Duff, people won’t know who you are in a few years either.(Daily Mail)
• Does last night’s BAFTAs mean Slumdog, Mickey Rourke, Kate Winslet, and Heath Ledger are all locks for Oscars?(Guardian)
• Who was Best Dressed at last night’s BAFTAs?(The Sun)
• Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees allegedly knocked up his housekeeper. His wife is not amused.(The Sun)
• We love a man in uniform, but Little Britain star David Walliams isn’t quite pulling off the naval look. At least his 18-year-old girlfriend looks entertained. Little girls do love to play dress up!(Daily Mail)
• A whole bunch of reasons why the producers of Milk, The Reader, Benjamin Button, and Frost/Nixon should stay home on Oscar night.(Guardian)
• Cate Blanchett may replace Sienna Miller in the Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie. (Guardian)
• The Daily Telegraph‘s Anthony Sappor says the word “golliwog” isn’t just simply “politically incorrect,” it’s offensive: “At what point did comparing a black person to a doll, initially described by its creator as ‘a horrid sight, the blackest gnome’, become okay? Am I, and the countless black people that have been called Golliwogs and taken offense, just being bad sports?”
• Eddie Izzard says he’s ready to tackle politics: “I’m just going to get more and more political. I have no mandate, but I have a platform, because I export British comedy around the world. Hopefully, I can come up with a commonsense attitude, being a transvestite with a career. I don’t know whether it’ll be a Schwarzenegger place, where you actually hold power, or a Bob Geldof place, where you protest and organize.”(The Times)
• Steve Coogan slams Britain’s Tory Party leader, David Cameron, with a haughty eloquence only a Brit could pull off: “There’s something obsequious about him, something incredibly Machiavellian that most people haven’t noticed yet. I can imagine him as an 18th Century swine, wearing a cloak and running someone through with a sword. Then he’d wipe the blade on his cloak. At the moment, he’s trying to do this angry thing. He thinks it makes him look passionate, but it just makes him look hot-headed and a bit pathetic.”(Mirror)
• The BBC says its next big global export is a game show called The Colour of Money, which “pits one person against 20 ATM machines. Contestants are given a financial target of up to £80,000 and have to get the exact amount from their choice of 10 machines. Each contains an unknown sum. Once they start, the machines count up in units of £1,000, and the risk lies in knowing when to say stop. Halt the machine too soon and you won’t reach the target; get too greedy and the machine will run out of money. “(The Times)
• Salman Rushdie is dating a woman half his age but twice his height. (Daily Mail)
• And they said it wouldn’t last…and they were right: Peaches Geldof is divorcing her drummer hubby after 186 days of wedded bliss.(The Sun)
• I’m digging Lily Allen in this “garish” orange dress with black tights underneath. She may say some dumb sh**, but girl can dress.(Daily Mail)
• Lily’s “The Fear” is No. 1 for a second week in the UK. (BBC)
• Give them your tired, your poor, your unused cans of Morton’s: The British have run out of grit to add traction to icy roads – so they’ve resorted to tossing table salt on the snow.(Guardian)
• Us U.S. Amarukins cain’t spail as wail as thim Brittuns, acording too a sirvay: “Sixty-two per cent of Americans got ‘embarrassed’ wrong, against 54 per cent of Britons who struggled with the word in a survey last year. Adults in the US performed less well on most of the ten words tested, including millennium (52 per cent wrong, against 43 per cent in UK), liaison (61 per cent to 54 per cent), and ‘accommodation’ (42 per cent to 36 per cent). Only ‘definitely’ and ‘friend’ were spelt correctly by more Americans.” Att leest wii no how to yuse cereal kommas!(Telegraph)