The Brit Awards 2009

We arrived in London in the early afternoon and made our way to our hotel which turned out to be really nice and only a short walk from Earl's Court, perfect!

We went round to Earl's Court and there were already lots of people waiting by the red carpet artist's entrance. We found a place over the road from there which wasn't ideal but we could see who was arriving and all the cars passed by us. It was interesting to watch this whole celebrity "thing", I'd never been to a red carpet event before. Fans screaming, swanky cars with blacked out windows, some egocentric celebs, some down to earth celebs, micro skirts, massive high heels, designer clothes. All a bit of madness really, and I was part of it. Reality stepped in a regular intervals when a cleaner would whizz over the red carpet with a carpet sweeper! Also, at times when there was a lull in arrivals and the screaming stopped a bird's song, which was more beautiful than many of these people's music, rang out from somewhere close by.

We saw all kinds of celebs, singers, bands, comedians, actors, presenters, Tom Jones, Alan Carr, Girls Aloud, David Hasselhoff to name a few. Most didn't come over to our side of the road. Girls Aloud spent a lot of time with the fans and did come over to our side, they were very beautiful girls. For the males reading here's a photo I got of Kimberley Walsh.

The only member of U2 who we saw arrive was Edge, he looked great and spent quite a lot of time with fans close to the red carpet. He was too far away to get a good photo of but here's one I found on the Net.

At 7pm we went inside to pick up our tickets. We thought it would take ages but it was very well organised and within minutes we had our tickets and made our way inside. It had been six hours since we'd either had something to eat or drink so our first priority was to find sustenance.

We then found our seats which were in the top tier, but close to the stage. Debbi spotted Dallas on the stage so we realised that u2 were going to be on first. The hosts were James Corden, Matt Horne and Kylie Minogue - I thought Kylie in particular was very good and she wore some beautiful dresses.

U2's performance at The Brits was much better than at the Grammys, for a start the sound was better (and I noticed even better still on TV than live) and the band seemed more relaxed. Lots of energy and that Bono can still strike the rock poses! He had the famous eyeliner on, along with eye shadow this time, must say I prefer just the eyeliner myself . Once he took off the glasses he kind of went into a character that looks so evil. Wouldn't like to meet this guy on a dark night! Wonder if he's going to stay and become part of the tour like MacPhisto.

I don't think they have quite nailed the song, again I felt that during the "the Sound" part Bono lost track of it towards the end. But that's my only criticism of the performance. Whether it works as an all-round rocker I'm not sure. The standing crowd at the front were going crazy at first when U2 came on but the dancing around stopped as the changes in pace during the song happened. (Both photos in this article taken off the Net I do not know who took them).

All too soon U2's performance was over, but I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the show. I thought Coldplay were really good, the sound of those huge drums resonated around the arena and the and the multi-coloured "confetti" effect was brilliant to see. Chris Martin's vocals were great. Take That appeared in a flying saucer like set that came down from above the stage, with flashing lights and much smoke, very effective. Duffy, who was the big award winner that night, gave an excellent performance, she's one hell of an singer. Kings Of Leon also gave a very strong performance and were very popular with the audience.

The outstanding achievement award went to The Pet Shop Boys and they performed a medley of their hits accompanied by inventive graphics on a screen behind them. Brandon Flowers (who had announced and given them the award) joined them onstage towards the end of their set - what a wonderful voice he has!

And that was it, the end of a really brilliant show. We went back outside and waited for a while where the artists were leaving, hoping to catch U2. As we waited we were entertained by an amusing Cockney security guard who chatted away. When one guest in five inch high heels nearly fell into the road as she was coming out he said. "Careful I don't want to do all the paperwork at this hour!"

We didn't see U2 but we did meet Dermot O'Leary who we both like. He was so sweet and kind, very down to earth. I got my photo taken with him, not the best of me but nice to have anyway!

So that was our Brits experience, well worth coming to London for. Lovely to see U2 live on stage once more, roll on later this year when we see whole U2 shows!