21:30 - The Ting Tings and Estelle take to the stage together for one of the most bizarre collaborations I’ve ever witnessed. It kind of works as they boh get to perform their biggest hits but it’s not a patch on last year’s Rihanna/Klaxons mash-up.

21:33 - Alan Carr on stage to present the award for ‘British Single’. What the hell is he wearing? I’m not exactly the most fashionable guy but some of these outfits are terrible. I’ll stick to Primark I think. And the winner is… not Diana Vickers… Girls Aloud. Much deserved, and it means Scouting for Girls missed out. A fact we should all celebrate.

21:37 - Tom Jones presenting the award for ‘British Album’. He’s finally let himself go gray! Good decision Tom, something you should have done years ago. And the winner is… Duffy for Rockferry. Three awards out of three. Adele must be sick as a parrot.

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Elbow have won the 2008 Nationwide Mercury Music Prize, beating the likes of Radiohead, Adele, Estelle, and bookies favourite Burial. The Manchester band won the annual music industry award for their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid.

The prize was contested by 12 of the best of British acts from this year, all of whom were considered to have released the best albums from the past 12 months. The nominees were announced back in July, when I expressed my desire for Radiohead to win for In Rainbows. But it wasn’t to be.

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Estelle has had an astounding couple of years, going from being a London rapper struggling to gain any sort of press or public attention, to being an A-list celebrity and R’n'B diva loved on both sides of the Atlantic.

The song that started her whole reinvention as the darling of America was obviously American Boy, which was helped by not only being a brilliantly catchy song but also having Kanye West playing a big part. But has Estelle got enough in her locker to carry on selling huge numbers of records?

Her new single is called Pretty Please (Love Me), and is a collaboration with Cee-Lo from Gnarls Barkley. The video is embedded after the break, along with my thoughts on both the song and promo for it.

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Estelle was riding high in the US charts with her album Shine, and the best-selling single from it, American Boy, and her career seemed to be heading in just one direction: up. Then her record company, Warner Music, decided to remove her material from Apple iTunes, and it’s all gone horribly wrong.

The short-sightedness of record companies continues to astound me. They are wholly failing to embrace the Internet and the related technologies that are changing the face of music distribution. This unwillingness to evolve is now affecting one British artist directly and unequivocally.

American Boy has been a huge hit all around the world, and transformed Estelle from a struggling artist to a diva who is loved on both sides of the Atlantic. The single was sitting at number 11 in the US Billboard charts before Warner decided to remove it from iTunes. It then fell to number 37.

They also did the same to the Album it came from, Shine, which has been nominated for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize. Shine had peaked at number 39 on the US Billboard before plummeting to number 159 when it was removed in its entirety from market leader Apple iTunes.

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The Mercury Music Prize, sponsored by Nationwide, is the annual award given to the best album by a British or Irish artist released in the previous 12 months. The ceremony isn’t until later in the year, but a short-list is first released, with the name of the 12 artists, and their albums, on it which the judges think are the best of British.

Having said that, the Mercury Music Prize has a history of choosing albums by up and coming artists, rather than necessarily widely known artists, and certainly not the best-selling ones. Which means there are always some huge surprises in the short-list, and more often than not, in the eventual winner chosen as well.

Last year saw Klaxons named as winners, for their début album Myths Of The Near Future. They beat the Arctic Monkeys, Dizzee Rascal, and Amy Winehouse along the way, although Winehouse’ performance at the awards ceremony probably invoked more press coverage than the Klaxons themselves.

This year’s short-list has now been published, and the usual surprises are present, as well as there being many names missing that were expected to appear.

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Madonna has secured her thirteenth number one record in the UK singles chart with 4 Minutes. Her collaboration with Justin Timberlake, produced by uber hit maker Timbaland, jumped from number 4 (fittingly) to number 1 over the past week.

Not only is this Madonna’s first number one since 2006, when she hit the top spot with Sorry, but it also takes her to fifth in the list of people who have had the most number ones in the UK.

At the moment, Elvis Presley (21 number ones), The Beatles (17), Westlife (14) and Cliff Richard (14) are all ahead of her in the pecking order, but Clliff only puts out a record once every 5 Christmas times, and is about 80 years old. The others are either dead or not recording any more, so the chances of her climbing higher are good.

Madonna’s rise to the top knocks Estelle and Kanye West from their pedestal, where they spent four weeks.

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This week has seen Estelle vying for the number one spot in the UK single charts with the queen of pop, Madonna, and the so called new Amy Winehouse, Duffy.

Estelle is fully expected to pip the two to number one with her first American lead release, American Boy, which also features Kanye West.

I really like the single, as I said so in my review on Killed By The Video Star, but a comment she made while talking to The Daily Star has prompted me to question whether she’s becoming a first class diva after a small amount of success, or actually a breath of fresh air to the bitchy music industry.

She told the newspaper’s music columnist Kim Dawson:

“The worst thing about me is that I just focus on myself rather than taking any notice of what’s going on around me.”

“All I know of Duffy is that she sounds like Dusty Springfield with a little bit of Lulu thrown in.”

“When people ask me about other singers, I just don’t really – what’s the word – care.”

“I’ve been working on my own record for such a long time that I don’t want to take away from it by talking about or dissing other artists.”

That sort of comment, especially the one about not caring enough to even discuss other artists, could be taken two different ways, and I’m having a hard time deciding which is true.

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