OK, I’m playing catch up here – the lovely Katy Perry is hosting the show tonight. Jared Leto and 30 Seconds To Mars are hosting the VIP section of the show.

And I’ve just watched a really slimy “congratulations to Obama” section. Urgh, just keep the politics out of it, Americans.

Winner, Most Addictive Track: Pink – So What

Performance: Beyonce takes to the stage to perform her slightly sanctimonial new single, If I Were A Boy. She’s wearing a dress made of old tubing, and one weird tinfoil glove thing on her left hand. Snark aside, it’s a stunning vocal performance, with no gimmicks.

Footballer Michael Owen and Anastacia (looking hot) come onstage to present the “Headliner” award. Nominees are Metallica, Linkin Park, Foo Fighters, Tokio Hotel and The Cure.

Winner: Headliner Award: Tokio Hotel

Performance: Take That, performing their new single, Greatest Day. The missus is commenting that Gary Barlow is starting to look better with age. Mark Owen, apparently, is not. I’m still not sold on the song, but I’m actually getting a Coldplay vibe from it, so it may be a grower. Awesome light show.

Solange Knowles and Travis McCoy from Gym Class Heroes are up next to announce the nominees for the Rock Out award. Please shut up about Obama, Solange. Nominees are 30 Seconds To Mars, Metallica, Slipknot, Linkin Park and Paramore. I want Paramore to win.

Winner, Rock Out Award: 30 Seconds To Mars – a deserved win, but Paramore soo deserved that award. Jared: “This says everything about our family, our fans across the world, who believe in us.”

Craig David takes the stage to announce the nominees for best album: Coldplay – Viva La Vida, Britney Spears – Blackout, Leona Lewis – Spirit, Duffy – Rockferry and Alicia Keys – As I Am.

Winner, Album Of The Year: Britney Spears – Blackout. Coldplay must be raging.

Britney appears via pre-recorded video, thanks us all and plugs her forthcoming album.

Performance: The Killers – Human. An amazing stage set. The band appear in segments of a grid, with video screens all around providing the illusion of movement. This is an awesome song anyway, but the video brings it to amazing heights. As Brandon sings “my signs are vital”, a big ECG graph pumps across the stage.

Performance: Kanye West – Love Lockdown. Kanye gets off to a bad start sounding off key and shouty. What works on the record isn’t working live, let me tell you, and it pains me to say that, because I’m a big fan of Kanye. Ouch.

Things improve when they abandon Love Lockdown and segue into American Boy. Estelle walks onstage in that godawful dress from the video. But the vibe is a million times better. Can they make it through American Boy without some obscure reference to Obama? Yes, they did! Awesome!

Now Grace Jones swaggers onto the stage to announce the award for best new act. Hard to believe she’s 60. Nominees are: Miley Cyrus, OneRepublic, Jonas Brothers, Katy Perry, Duffy. This one’s going to be hard to call.

Winner, New Act Award: Katy Perry. She says “The host can’t win – I demand a recount!”

Someone actually let Kerry Katona on a live stage! A native Liverpudlian, she’s getting booed mercilessly. Ouch. Nominees for the Video Star award are: Snoop Dogg – Sensual Seduction, Santogold – LES Artistes, Weezer – Pork And Beans, 30 Seconds To Mars – A Beautiful Lie, Madonna – Four Minutes.

Winner, Video Star award: 30 Seconds To Mars, A Beautiful Lie. Jared: “We are so unbelievably grateful, so thankful to all you people out there, the fans that voted for this award.”

Performance: The Ting Tings. Katie White always looks like she’s just stepped out to the corner shop rather than to a massive arena for a major performance. But hell, she rocks just the same. Everybody knows That’s Not My Name and the crowd are echoing the lyrics back to her. I love this band.

Perez Hilton joins Katy Perry onstage for the Best Act Ever Award. Shit, man, we’ve been rick rolled – Rick Astley wins the award.

Winner, Best Act Ever: Rick Astley

Leona Lewis is onstage to present the Ultimate Urban award – nominees are: Lil Wayne, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Beyonce, Chris Brown. How are any of these acts remotely urban? Get a grip.

Winner, Ultimate Urban Award: Kanye West. He dedicates the award to his mother in a very brief acceptance speech. Are Kanye’s speeches longer when he doesn’t win the award and storms the stage? I think so.

Performance: Kid Rock. He gives us a taste of something altogether different, then breaks into All Summer Long. He may not be your favourite performer ever, but he knows how to work the stage, and his band are brilliant. But I’m a bit bored of this song at this point…

Kelly Rowland is on to present the award for Artist’s Choice. Nominees are…everybody.

Winner, Artist’s Choice: Lil Wayne, who promptly thanks God and his record company in the same sentence. We’ve gotta check this guy out though, because Americans are raving about him.

Performance: Duffy – Mercy. An unconventional entrance (what, Perry’s the only one who can make inappropriate sexual jokes) has Duffy and her band appearing out of freight containers. But the inside of the containers are all plush and lit up. With a chandelier. Very clever.

Estelle and Tim Cahill come onstage to announce the nominees for Act Of 2008. Nominees are: Leona Lewis, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Coldplay and Amy Winehouse.

Winner, Act Of 2008: What a bloody joke, it’s Britney Spears. All that other talent, and they gave it to Spears.

Bono is introduced to the stage. Is he going to pontificate? Hope not. He manages to aggravate the crowd by claiming The Beatles for Ireland “If it wasn’t for the potato famine, John, Paul, George and Ringo would have been born in Dublin.” He’s naturally introducing the MTV Ultimate Award, a kind of lifetime achievement award…to Paul McCartney.

Winner, Ultimate Award: Paul Bloody McCartney

Good lord, Bono’s already announced McCartney and he’s still rambling on about this auditorium not being here in 300 years. I fear Bono will still be talking in 300 years.

Ah, go on Paul, let’s have yet another bloody chorus of Hey Jude. I can never hear that damned song enough. Oooh, cue VT of British bands kissing McCartney’s ass. Even Slipknot.

Is it just me and Heather Mills who thinks this guy is overrated?

Winner, Best UK and Ireland Act: Leona Lewis. We are relieved when Leona Lewis materialises on stage. She gives a humble thanks to her fans.

Performance: The Wombats give a very raw performance of Bleeding Love. It only really becomes clear during the chorus, because the first verse is a frigging wreck. I wouldn’t blame Leona if she and Ryan Tedder came onstage with semi-automatics and opened fire on them. This is not a clever interpretation, it’s just a brutal fuck-up.

Some people who we don’t know and don’t really care about come on to announce nominees for Europe’s Favourite. Nominees are: Shiri Maimon, Finley, Dima Bilan, Emre Aydin and Leona Lewis.

Winner, Europe’s Favourite: Emre Aydin from Turkey. Who sounds a teeny bit like Borat.

And finally, Jared Leto’s annoying perving over his female guests is brought to a head with Leona Lewis. Can we not have him back next year? He barely let his guests get a word in edgeways.

Anyway, that’s it for us, as our Sky+ somehow screwed us over on the final five minutes. Damn. A good awards show, Katy Perry did a stunning job, although I’m still angry that Paul McCartney won anything. Did you guys enjoy the show?

The Wasting Time blog has an excellent post about MTV and its transformation from an influential music channel to a purveyor of brain-dead unoriginal reality TV programming. They even go so far as to suggest that Music Television is no longer an appropriate title for the channel, considering “less than 10% of its programming is devoted to music”.

I remember back when MTV was young. We couldn’t afford satellite TV in our house, but my friend Stoogie had it in his place and we’d trail over to his house once or twice a week to watch shows like Headbangers’ Ball and Beavis And Butthead.

MTV used to be where you got your fix of new music.

Did the rise of alternative niche music channels change that? Was it the dreaded Internet? Who knows?

Now that I’m older, and I can afford a subscription to the full music package, I’ve chosen not to. MTV used to be the essential part of any cable or satellite music package. It simply has nothing to offer now, yet they’re still charging for brain-numbing programming instead of the leading edge music they were once famous for.

What a shame.

Two questions though: are there any good alternatives to MTV worth looking at? And if not, where do you find out about new music these days?

Yep, Scouserville is MTV’s preferred venue for 2008’s Europe Music Awards. Specifically, the brand new 10,000 seater Echo Arena.

Great news for Liverpool which is also the European City of Culture in 2008, both events tie in nicely together and should attract attention to the City.

Of course, the organisers couldn’t possibly resist the soundbyte opportunity to name check The Beatles along with various Liverpudlian musical acts of varying quality. Bizarrely, they tried to shoehorn Atomic Kitten into their list of great musical achievements.

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