I STOPPED watching the Brit Awards a few years ago when it became glaringly obvious that it was no longer about rock bands getting boozy and doing something daft to make headlines.

The sight of Jarvis Cocker mooning at Michael Jackson, or Chumbawumba emptying a champagne bucket over John Prescott made the Brits a must-watch in the 1990s.

But recently, it became a totem for everything that is wrong with the British music industry, celebrating anodyne, soulless music for dinner parties and largely bestowing awards upon those who had trained at its own Brit School. It was a bit of a turn-off.

So, fair play to Madonna, who of course has never been afraid to push the envelope, setting trends left, right and centre in her 30-year career, to give the whole affair a bit of life by spectacularly stacking it on live television.

It is the TV event of 2015. I doubt it will be surpassed, despite there being another ten months of the year to go. Everyone else may as well pack up now and just stick the test card on. Try beating that.

You can be as clever as you like with television, producing complicated drama, storylines that take years to come to fruition, but nothing, and I mean nothing, beats a bit of slapstick comedy.

The nation’s favourite comedy moment is when Del Boy falls through the bar in Only Fools And Horses. I remember seeing that on TV, laughing until I went puce, then purple, then grey as I struggled to get my breath back.

There was nothing complex about it, yet it became an iconic moment on British television.

This brings me to the conclusion at which I arrived shortly after Madonna’s fall.

She knew what she was doing.

Is it a coincidence that in the three days since the incident, all we have heard is her new single? A Vine video of the fall has been looped seven million times, all set to the background music of her new song.

She’s lived in the UK, she knows what sells. In the 1980s, it was the controversy of an interracial kiss in the video for Like A Prayer that brought increased publicity.

A few years ago, it was Britney Spears she puckered up for, again, with an album to sell.

She’s a canny operator, is Madge. She knew that throwing herself down those steps would send that new song into the public’s consciousness.

She’ll have a number one at the weekend, which will make the cuts and bruises feel a little better.

When you strip it down to the bare bones, however, we have all had a right old laugh at a 56-year-old woman falling down.

I saw someone take a tumble in Darlington town centre the other day. Did I go up and film her, laughing in her face? No. Obviously.

We all need to take a long look at ourselves. What have we become?

IF it wasn’t Madonna we were talking about, it was answering the simple question: blue/black or white/gold?

Yes, a picture of a dress went viral in the latter part of the week, where the original poster of the dress, a godawful patterned effort, wanted to know if the colour scheme was blue and black, or white and gold.

After carefully examining the picture, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t care less.

And neither should you. Yet it has somehow captured the imagination of the internet.

If we spent as much time discussing the failings of our nation as we have talking about colour perception, we’d live in a much better place.