Amy Winehouse: great performance, not so great acceptance speech. Photograph: Dave Hogan/Getty Images
He had promised a "carnival of mayhem" but the Russell Brand-hosted Brits, broadcast live for the first time since the Sam Fox/Mick Fleetwood/Cliff Richard car crash of 1989, was by and large a smooth, slick affair that will have delighted ITV and its sponsors but left music fans cold.
A couple of vaguely risqué, and slightly rubbish, jokes ("Britney Spears doesn't so much release songs as release new pictures of her vagina") and the odd vaguely risky gag ("A good international breakthrough would be if American soldiers and British soldiers told each other where they were standing") aside, he was the consummate safe pair of hands.
It probably looked much better on television, but in the cavernous Earls Court auditorium the use of two stages to keep the show rattling along inevitably left it short on spectacle. On the upside, veterans of the interminably long set changes of the non-live years were celebrating the fact that the show zipped along at a cracking pace.
Yet it remains one of the eternal mysteries of the Brits that only American performers have the necessary showmanship to perform to a few hundred Brits school pupils and legions of suited execs as thought they are playing Shea Stadium. As such, this year's concentration on Brits left many of the performances underwhelming (Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars being a particularly snoozesome moment).
Only Amy Winehouse, a deserving winner, and the unpredictably brooding menace of the Gallaghers came close to matching the Killers and Red Hot Chili Peppers for onstage charisma. Indeed, while the BPI has been trumpeting the best year for British music since the heady days of 1997, only with the appearance of Britpop veterans Jarvis Cocker and Oasis was there a glimpse of the wit and rock star danger organisers said they were looking for.
That Take That stole the show from the Arctic Monkeys, whose sarcastic schtick is starting to grate even if their awards were hugely deserved, was highly fitting. The Brits has always mainly been about shifting units and their triumphant comeback both warmed the hearts of their fans and the cockles of record company execs buffeted by falling sales.
The atmosphere in the room was ever-so-slightly dampened by the fact that EMI had that very afternoon issued its second serious profit warning in as many months and is laying off staff in an effort to save £110m. And ITV, the Brits broadcast partner, has endured a torrid year in which its future as a mass market channel has been questioned.
As those present made their habitual retreat from the official party for the various record company bashes around town - fewer in number this year as executives twigged that quaffing gallons of champagne when the industry is facing up to wholesale structural changes might not have been too wise - they would have reflected that a fair to middling, supremely safe Brits was more than enough.
But next year, they will hope for some bigger name presenters (Sean Bean and Alan Carr don't quite cut it), a replacement for the anodyne Fearne Cotton as backstage interviewer and some acts with true star quality. The most charismatic onstage appearance was the Irn Bru bottle brandished by the Fratellis. Even Amy Winehouse, in the tabloids for weeks for her drunken misbehaviour, could only manage a mumbled thankyou to her mum and dad.
