The Brit Awards 2025, TV review: If only ITV could have beeped out Jack Whitehall entirely

Telegraph

02-03-2025

The good old Brits, always chasing a bit of on-trend, near the knuckle topical fun - and inevitably missing the mark. You knew the moment host JACK WHITEHALL, who never stopped shouting all night, kicked things off with a limp Squid Game skit - so 2023, Jack love - that this was going to be a long night.
And so it proved. You couldn't blame the acts (well I could, but that's someone else's job) but two hours plus of Whitehall, asked back to host after a four-year absence, relentlessly roasting all and sundry with what on paper probably read like drop-dead funny quips but which, when belted out in his strangled gargle, just dropped dead as tumbleweed across the glittery O2 floor.
It's an odd one because when I write 'Whitehall described The Last Dinner Party as the 'Tatler Girls Aloud' it makes me laugh. Delivered live it just sounded too smart arse by half. At least Bruno Tonioli thought Jack was hysterical but then Bruno Tonioli is paid to think everything is hysterical.
. @jackwhitehall started off RUTHLESS 💀 @KSI #BRITs pic.twitter.com/4J9G7h7CgJ
— BRIT Awards (@BRITs) March 1, 2025
Why Whitehall thought his entire spiel should consist of insulting pretty much each and every nominee is a bit of a mystery. The plus side was that it kept my attention as, surely, please please please, someone would wipe the smug grin off his chops before the night was out. My money was on Teddy Swims, who looks like he can handle himself and would surely take none too kindly to having his face described as a primary school desk. But no, each and every one just sucked it up.
The days of Jarvis Cocker and Chumbawumba are sadly long behind us. Protest now consists of a posh girl from The Last Dinner Party dressed as a medieval nun lamenting the decline of small music venues and a bloke from The Ezra Collective extolling the revolutionary qualities of the trumpet.
Of course this was the Brat Brits, a coronation night for Charli XCX. Hand on heart, I've now heard enough Charli XCX 'I'm an artiste' thank you speeches to last me a lifetime. But at least the multi-winner put the finger on ITV's nanny-state approach to a night that's meant to celebrate artistic abandon. 'I hear ITV were complaining about my nipples - but I feel we're in the era of free the nipple, right?'
Not if you're ITV, who turned the last half of the night into the beep show, reaching the height of absurdity as Whitehall said to a heavily featured Danny Dyer (as he was on a weird amount, I'm not body shaming): 'It's after the watershed, you can say what you like.' Followed by a Mic Mute. And another and another.
The feature would have been more useful for a voiceover which scaled epic heights of overstatement. 'Charlie was the epicentre of the universe last year,' crooned the fangirl commentary. 'And created a cultural movement that will forever go down in history'. Hyperbole much?
Leaving Whitehall aside - his cringe-making chat with Little Mix escapee Jade on the subject of butt plugs truly plumbed the depths - the live side of things was a pretty slick affair, though many of the acts seemed to be auditioning for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, so far over the top swung the production values.
And a tribute to the late Liam Payne felt sincere, though it sat a tad uneasily among all the talk of nipples and butt plugs, but at least it sounded a note of sincerity in a night that sorely lacked that particular quality.