“Hi Josh” began the email following my trip to the MTV Europe Music Awards in Stockholm in 2000...
“Welcome back. I’m hardly dancing on the table after reading your copy, what happened?”
It was a very good (and understandable) question – what had happened? For a few days, we chiselled and tweaked the extraordinarily flimsy article I’d filed, we cobbled together something from paparazzi shots and attempted to make my ridiculously weak insider observations sound interesting, although they were mainly pearls like “Robbie Williams turned up in A SUIT” (a big sartorial statement/violation at the time).
But the truth is, even I don’t know exactly what happened at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Stockholm in 2000 and I was there. You could say I had far too much of a good time then returned to work without a single substantiated quote from anyone famous. Yes, you could definitely argue that.
I’ll recount the tale as I remember it. It was the dawn of a new millennium and I was set to cover the MTV Europe Music Awards for both more! magazine (RIP) and Just 17 (also RIP). They’d made a deal to split the cost of getting me there and back and my brief was to get wild and exciting quotes from all the people we thought were cool and shaggable - Robbie Williams and All Saints, especially. I was a fresh-faced showbiz reporter (in inverted commas) with zero experience so far, and I’d barely even been on a plane before so going alone to Sweden was immediately invigorating. I got drunk midair and I smoked at airports because you could do that back then.
When I got to Stockers I was put up in a snazzy hotel and invited by the good people of MTV to go along to a couple of pre-awards drinks parties. I’m zipping through the early bits because I can’t remember them so well. All I know is I was there for a whole day before the awards so there was time to kill (and this was before we all had the internet at our fingertips). I ordered lobster on room service, I enjoyed the rich variety of Swedish grot on offer at the hotel, and I went to the aforementioned drinks parties where hot models handed out complimentary booze, which I dutifully drank while talking to precisely no one. All the other journalists in attendance appeared to be huddled in impenetrable little groups that I was most definitely not invited to join. I remember at some point the popstar Kelis turned up, hot stuff on the back of her smash hit Caught out There, and as a conveyor belt of journalists casually wandered over to get their quotes, I looked on gormlessly. I knew I should say something to her, I should ask her some kind of question - why does she do music? Who does she reckon will win an award? - but I lost my confidence, bottled it and went back to the hotel, got another lobster (because, you know, when in Rome/Stockholm), and presumably went to town on myself because I was in my early-20s, drunk, alone and in a hotel room.
So to the big night itself, and this unfortunately is where things start to get blurrier and annoyingly some of it will sound like bullshit but I promise you it isn’t. All of this is the absolute truth as I know it. The awards were being held in a massive arena in the middle of the city as you’d expect, and as I stood alone and smoking nervously/heavily in the queue for media people, a real-life person started talking to me. I’d barely uttered a word for 24 hours so I was initially shocked. My voice was croaky from under-use but thankfully I soon got into the groove. I remembered how conversations went, he’d say something, I’d say something, then discussion would presumably ensue from there, as happened. On beginning to speak, I also realised that the pre-drinks I’d enjoyed from my hotel minibar had unwittingly made me what I like to call “quite pissed”. Didn’t matter my new pal was all over the shop. He had better seats than me, he bragged, he was going out with someone who worked for MTV, he boasted, he’d smuggled some drugs over on the plane, he practically shouted. Plus he was staying at the hotel where all the stars were staying. WE SHOULD GO THERE AFTER THE SHOW, he declared. And then we high-fived or chest bumped or snogged each other passionately for a few minutes. I can’t remember. I do know I absolutely loved this guy, though. This thing was writing itself.
For one night only we became inseparable and he was honestly the best friend I’ve ever had and I can’t even remember his name. Neither can I remember the awards ceremony at all in any way whatsoever apart from I do know that Robbie Williams had the temerity to turn up wearing A SUIT. I think we spent most of our time gassing and throwing back pints of complimentary lager which were again being handed out by top models. Or just normal bar staff, I honestly couldn’t tell by this point. It was then his idea to get a head-start on going back to his hotel because that’s where the big party was happening and chancers would be bum-rushing the place any minute. Chancers, I laughed, FUCKING CHANCERS. Where do they get off??
“You can come in as my guest” he slurred as I threw my arms around him and probably kissed his ear. So back to his big swanky hotel we went, and once there we selected a perch, a vantage point, and sat sophisticatedly by the piano in the bar bellowing along to whatever tune the hotel pianist was playing. He started taking requests (or, more likely, we started demanding them), and after about an hour of this we were joined in the elegant hotel bar by Bono and The Edge who you might recognise from the band U2. They looked on, full of admiration, nodding their heads - presumably desperate to be interviewed by someone, anyone, as our crew (because it was officially a crew/mob by now) did a very inspiring (and I expect quite shouty) version of My Way by the mafia favourite, Frank Sinatra. By now I’d taken to chucking back whiskey, the upside of which meant I felt fabulous, the downside being that I wasn’t remotely bothered that I was singing around a piano in front of two legendary rock stars from a band I don’t often listen to, both primed for a few decent quotes that could earn me my stripes. *Instead I shoved Bono out of my way and grabbed another glass of something.
(*okay that bit probably didn’t happen)
“Dude, let’s fucking go to the actual fucking party now... in the ballroom or whatever...” burped my nameless pal into my nose, and that’s exactly what we did, in a roundabout, convoluted kind of way. Problem was we couldn’t get into the actual party party because you needed some kind of exclusive invitation (in the form of a wristband) and they had gigantic bouncers on the door who could tear my face off my skull like they were taking the wrapper off a Quality Street, so instead of attempting pointless negotiation we formulated an unbeatable plan and headed up in the lift a few floors to see if there was a way of breaking into this damn thing without encountering any huge dudes. How hard could it be?
As it turns out not remotely hard at all. We hit the umpteenth floor of the hotel, we dragged our ears along a corridor listening for party sounds and eventually found them behind one of the doors. “It might be locked,” I speculated, as my new buddy flew through the air shoulder-first and smashed through the door with ease because as it turns out it was already ajar. We were in, we were officially at the party, only we’d misjudged the precise geography of the bash so rather than finding ourselves strutting onto the main dance floor like a couple of proud cocks (or just cocks) or by the main bar with the rest of the chancers, we’d somehow crashed the very exclusive VIP area where you needed an extra-special invitation (in the form of a gold-plated diamond-studded wristband, I expect) to get in or out. So we were there, but we were trapped with the fabulous superstars and their chemically-enhanced management teams, and I’m fairly sure by this point I wasn’t making much sense and my bezzie mate was already slumped asleep (or possibly dead) in a chair within eight seconds.
I was flying solo now. I slalomed gracefully to the bar, strung a drinks order together and never saw my best pal ever again. With a foggy/excitable mind I’d already completely lost the chair he was napping/dead in and had no idea how long we’d been there anyway. A minute? Two hours? I was suddenly in deep conversation with Mel B and Emma Bunton from The Spice Girls, and then in walked Kelis and I finally had the stones to corner her for a chinwag (which I imagine she enjoyed immensely). I made all five members of The Backstreet Boys laugh hysterically (I think), before the tall one with the demi-beard hugged me out of his way. It was like being in a headspinny Madame Tussauds and on dynamite form, promising myself I’d remember every quote and every joke and every tiny detail on my way to blowing everyone’s socks off when I got back home. I felt amazing. More whiskey! My brain cracked in two, I held a wall. Voices slurred, time to go. Corridors whizzed past me... cold air hit my face...
I woke up fully clothed on my hotel bed next to a plate of bright orange lobster shells with not a single lucid memory from the night before in my head.
“So Josh, how was it?” asked my boss when I sloped into the office the next day.
“I saw Robbie Williams and he was wearing A SUIT!” I beamed.