* READ more about the GIT awards here

THERE are many reasons why February is the most depressing month. Valentines Day and the inevitable cold snap are two, but surely the main reason to hide under the covers until March is the annual music industry smug-fest that is the Brit Awards.

This year the Brits looks like a being a battle between the all conquering Adele, whose 21 appears to have become as ubiquitous as the common cold, and ginger haired urban guitar strummer Ed Sheeran, whose collaborations with grime artists will surely get the ever credible hungry judges hot under the collar.

Last year’s ceremony was hailed as a reinvention for the much maligned evening as less mainstream talents such as Laura Marling, Mumford and Sons and Arcade Fire received awards much to the presumed bemusement of red carpet interviewer Peter Andre and the majority of the watching ITV audience.

Yet, for all these nods to authenticity, we still had to endure James Corden, Justin Bieber and the bizarre sight of Boris Becker presenting a gong. And there lies the problem with the Brits in a nutshell – as hard as it tries it will never, ever be cool.

For me early memories of the Brits are a strange mixture of Jonathan King and Annie Lennox.

Then there was the infamous year when the awards were hosted by Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox (honestly I’m not making this up) in a display of presenting incompetence which made Ferne Cotton look like Richard Dimbleby.

In 1992, the KLF made a brave attempt to humiliate the organisers after a bizarre performance involving machine guns, death metal and a dead sheep, but the ceremony still seemed determined to slap the back of Phil Collins and Rod Stewart whilst handing out Best Newcomer awards to Beverley Craven and Tasmin Archer.