The time I went to the BRIT Awards 2018
In one night, I went from absolute extravagance watching a Lamborghini get smashed up on stage, to absolute destitution in Kings Cross McDonalds.
Last week, I was part of The BRITs Voting Academy, which decides the shortlist for the BRIT Awards 2025. It’s quite an honour and a privileged thing to do. There is no application process, as someone must nominate you to be part of it. I’m relatively modest about my career, but even I acknowledge this is a sign of how far I’ve come. In 2008, I sat with two of my care workers on the children’s home couches, watching Duffy win Album of The Year. This year, the guy who recorded that album nominated me to be on this year’s voting academy. It’s funny how life works itself out.
This isn’t my first encounter with the BRITs. In 2018, with my shameless chavvy bravado, I blagged myself a Diamond Dinner ticket to that year’s ceremony. I was studying for an undergraduate degree in Liverpool then and wasn’t in the industry yet. All the sound dropped around me momentarily when that email confirmation pinged my inbox. To them, they were putting a bum on an empty seat. To me, it was my foot in the door. My chance to brush shoulders with the top 1% of the industry, with people who had only ever existed in newspapers, social media feeds, and YouTube Videos. It became one of the most unforgettable nights of my life.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with The BRITs, they are the British version of the Grammys. Full of glitz, glamour, and prestige. However, anyone in the industry knows that it is not based solely on excellence. Only the releases which have entered the Official UK Top 40 Charts (also run by the same organisation that puts on the BRITs) and put forward by their label can be considered. We all know some of the best art doesn’t necessarily enjoy immediate commercial success. So, unless you have a good label and good budgets and good marketing teams and good connections, you’ll never be a contender. Still, it’s the biggest celebration of British music of the year, and this was my only chance to be part of it.
There must be a catch because there is always a catch. There was a catch. A snag that me in my 30s would definitely consider that me in my 20s didn’t. I could afford the return train journey to London. I couldn’t afford a place to stay for the night. By nature of my background, I didn’t have family or friends to pull favours from. Things in London seemed more 24-hour than up north, so what’s the worst that can happen?
That is the prerogative of being young, no concept of fear. No what ifs, no buts, no maybes, the holy trinity of naivety. As a pre-teen, before I went into care, I regularly slept rough in the bushes of overly flamboyant roundabouts to avoid going home. Once I left care, I would sleep on people’s floors or office chairs when working in studios once the session had gone past the time of the last train. In fact, even during this time [2018], while studying for my undergraduate, I would book the Uni studios in the middle of the night so I would have somewhere to sleep when I couldn’t get back to the place where I was staying rent-free, as I couldn’t afford the student accommodation. So, it only seemed natural that I would consider staying in a 24-hour McDonald's until the first train back up north the morning after.
Once the elation of the confirmation email reached a cruising altitude, I could read the instructions properly. It requested food orders, drinks orders, and drinks bags. It said the dress code was “glamourous” and “not black tie and no jeans”. This sent me into a tailspin. What is the difference between a standard suit and a glamorous one? When I get like this, playing email tennis only makes things worse. What is the difference between a drinks bag and a drinks order? This wasn’t my world, and I felt ashamed to ask for help.
The email said, to arrive at 16:30 at Arora Ballroom at the back of the O2 Arena for reception drinks. It was late February, cold and windy, and dusk was about to set in. But it doesn’t matter how cloudy the skies are, how grimy the fences are, how dirty the roads are. Everything always feels a little brighter when you’re doing something special.
The email said, to arrive at The BRITs red carpet entrance. Things started to feel real as I got to the world on the other side of the camera lenses. There is something eery about not seeing a roaring sea of lenses snapping and flashing that famous carpet. Instead, it was the silent flickers of iPhone cameras as people stopped to have their pictures taken to prove they were there. I wanted to stop and have someone take a picture of me like I had seen many do on the TV. All it would take is a simple question. I heard others ask it, but I couldn’t muster my confidence. It was probably the only time I would have this experience, and rather than be the fanboy I was, I told myself it was cooler not to ask and just walk through like I do this all the time. Everywhere I looked, I recognised faces. I may have moved my foot from the door to inside the room. It was the moment I wanted, and I fell into a corner and collapsed into my phone. I had no idea how to talk to anyone because what right did I have to be in there?
The email said, at 17:00, to move through to dinner, a 3-course meal with a performance from the Critics’ Choice Award-winner. I had never enjoyed such levels of extravagance. I sat at the table, and the cutlery was reassuringly heavy. Coke bubbles bopped and glittered inside the fuchsia crystal goblets as the stage lights lit up for the performance. The food arrived looking like Michelangelo model sculptures, so bright, smooth, and vibrant. My eyes gobbled to food before I could even pick up my fork. Usually, the beef I had at home ended up so grey it looked like Dot Cotton’s lung. There is no hiding your background with food. How and what we eat will reveal all to everyone.
“You know the mash is supposed to make the veg stick to your folk”, a guest in the next seat advised. My eyes rolled in confusion as I continued to turn the fork over and scoop like a spoon.
The email said, 19:00, to walk through and watch the show in priority seats. The drink bag was handed to me, just a bag of cans of Coke. And the extravagance from the dining room was deemed dull as the biggest celebration in music began. The clothes, the jewellery, and the expensive haircuts were all on display. Maybe this is what they meant by glamorous? All of that was surpassed when I watched swooshing baseball bats smash up a Lamborghini just so Kendrick Lamar could make his rapping more visually appealing for TV.
The email said, to go to the after-show party after the show, but the room was quiet. An actual after-party was probably going off somewhere else, away from the riff-raff like me. I thought there would be little opportunity here, so I left.
The email ended, and now, my decisions were my own. I knew I needed to find a 24-hour McDonald's to be safe until the next train at 5am. There is no shortage of McDonald’s in London. I decided it was probably best to be near Euston station, so I headed that way. The closet I stumbled upon was Kings Cross. It was 24 hours, so ticked my boxes. It was 23:30.
I walked in, and the place was howling with a hooligan of boys. Intermingled with the boisterous thunders, classical music played out of the speaker system. I suppose it’s hard to have an angry brawl to Tchaikovsky. It was busier than I expected, but not heaving. It was less a restaurant and more of a humanitarian crisis centre. Is it possible we were all here because we were all homeless tonight?
The walls were coated with signs saying, ‘Seats are for paying customers only’. My belly was still full of indulgences from the show. Sweat-laced coins sieved through my fingers as I figured out if I could afford the minimum cups of coffee I would need to stay the night. I scanned the room for an empty table. I looked around, but I wasn’t really looking around as I tried to avoid eye contact from everyone there.
A tower of Happy Meal boxes sprouted out of the table, with sprinkles of crumbs and lettuce towards the counter.
“You need to leave now,” the security guard said. You can’t sleep here. You need to leave now.
“I wasn’t asleep. I closed my eyes for a second.”
“Get up and leave now.”
The treatment was harsh, but I needed a seat to stay. I learned the rules for staying in this McDonald's. Needs must when the devil drives.
Five and a half hours. That’s all I have to kill. Other than drinking coffee, I wasn’t sure what to do. There were no plugs to charge my phone and I needed to preserve my battery. Despite planning to do something like this, I didn’t bring a book or a notebook. Without something to occupy myself, keeping my eyes open would be even harder.
I was still in my suit from The BRITs, and I felt the glares of the whole room. Keeping your head down is hard when you stand out like that. I stood out. I had a change of clothes in my bag. But getting changed could also risk losing my seat and getting kicked out. I was in a position of a cat, hearing a dog in the distance, unsure how to move to avoid danger. I decided it was less risky to blend into the chaos and change my clothes. After a quick dash to the urine-laid toilets, I was now wearing blue jeans, trainers, and a sweater, a uniform more suitable for this time and place.
To quash my boredom, I would listen to other people’s conversations. Next to me were two girls, one with blond hair, the other brown. They were wearing oversized coats and had small bulging bags with them. There was a plumb-nosed little old man with a faded black jacket sat opposite talking to them. At first, I thought it must have been one of their relatives. But I soon worked out it wasn’t, as he kept asking questions he should’ve known the answers to. The girls discussed how they couldn’t go back home. That their home was a children’s home. They were sixteen and fed up with being treated like children. I figured out that they would be on the missing list tonight and perhaps had a plan similar to mine to keep themselves safe. I felt the need to check they were safe but couldn’t find a way.
It’s hard not to imagine what you would do when faced with a situation like this. Often, people think of themselves as the hero, but when faced with reality, they make different decisions. This thought went through my head as I grappled with what and when to do something. Him going to the toilet would be the perfect moment. He may have appeared like a little old man, but he had the bladder of a Duracell bunny. As their conversations went on and on, I became more convinced they were being groomed. In my head, I planned out what I would say to them when the opportunity arrived, “Are you ok? Do you feel safe? You’re more than welcome to sit with me if you like if you want to get away from him. I’m only staying till my first train back home”.
Eventually, he stood up, and this was my chance. As soon as the door for the toilets closed behind him, I stood up and went to their table.
“Excuse me”, this stern Eastern European voice shouted at me as her arm fell in front. I looked up, confused, at seeing this blond, middle-aged woman. “You can’t go near that table. Please stay away”. Spidey senses tingled as I realised this was probably a grooming gang. If I continued, I would be in danger, too. I don’t fancy getting stabbed tonight raced through my head. Before I knew it, I could see two or three others circled around the girls. I went back to my seat.
The little old man returned, and coded head movements between him and the Eastern European woman occurred. They left. I felt helpless and cowardly as I watched him, the girls, theEastern European woman , and a few others go together. I managed to sneak some pictures of everyone to hand them to the police in the morning. It was probably too late by then.
I sat in shock. In shock of being teleported to a world I knew, I grew up with, I lived in, but at that point in my life, I had forgotten. In a matter of hours, I went from being surrounded by absolute extravagance to being surrounded by absolute destitution. I went from a world that people saw, cared about, and valued, to one that people were blinded to, ignored, and demeaned.
For two weeks after that night, I obsessively searched the internet to see if those girls were reported missing. To see if the information I had was of any use. I couldn’t find anything. I like to think it’s because everything probably worked out in the end. But I know there is a good chance that things probably didn’t because they tend to be written off when it involves people from the care system.
Shortly after this, I grabbed a final coffee and I left to get my train. I walked in a big loop around Euston till 5am.
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