The MTV Europe Music Awards took place last night in Liverpool, and it was the perfect opportunity for the city to show off that famous sense of humour it’s always blathering on about. How did it do this? By naming Rick Astley as the Best Act Ever? No – it did it by giving 30 Seconds To Mars multiple awards even though they’re the worst band in the history of recorded music. Oh, you crazy Liverpudlians with your funny pranks.

Also Paul McCartney got given something called an Ultimate Legend award at the MTV EMAs, which isn’t surprising because he’s hands-down the thing that Liverpool is most famous for. Well, the most tangible one, anyway – it’s not like you can give an award to a chippy sense of wounded resentment, is it?

For all its sins – like the way it commoditised the music industy and its perverse insistence on keeping Kerry Katona in gainful employment – MTV is making the world a better place. No, really, it is.

And it’s all down to MTV’s foreign exchange awards host scheme. At the MTV VMAs earlier this year, Europe sent Russell Brand over to America as a host and then sat back as he offended everyone in sight. And so America retaliated by letting Katy Perry host last night’s MTV EMAs in Liverpool, even though everyone hates her because she held a knife once.

But anyway, the awards. Rather than do what others are doing and grumble that hardly anyone British won any MTV EMAs even though Britain had graciously allowed MTV to hold its awards show here, we’ll just try and concentrate on the facts. And those facts are:

* Pink won Most Addictive Track for a song we heard once and can’t remember.

* Kanye West won Ultimate Urban, depriving everyone of the only reason to watch music awards shows – the embittered Kanye West spaz-out.

* As with the MTV VMAs, Britney Spears won several awards, including Album Of The Year, Act Of 2008 and the We Promise To Give You All Sorts Of Awards You Don’t Deserve If You Let Us Do A Documentary About You bumlick award.

* 30 Seconds To Mars won the Rock Out and Video Star awards, which we’re taking as either a) an elaborate joke that we haven’t got yet, b) a shameful recognition that Jared Twatting Leto was the most famous person from an American rock band to bother showing up, or c) that God hates us all.

And then there was Paul McCartney. As the sort of guest of honour at the MTV EMAs, it was only right that Paul McCartney was given the biggest award of the night – the Ultimate Legend award or, as it’s informally known, the It’s Safe To Assume That All Paul McCartney Albums In The Future Will Be Rubbish award.

As Liverpool’s most famous son, not only did Paul McCartney turn up to the MTV EMAs but he was also deeply gracious in victory, as Reuters reports:

“Many years ago four little boys were born here in Liverpool and we went on to do quite well,” McCartney said of his former band the Beatles, the most successful pop act of all time. “So thanks to all my family, to all of you for coming along, to all of you in Liverpool, to everyone in Britain, to everyone in America for voting for Mr. Obama.”

So congratulations to Paul McCartney for winning his MTV EMA, and commiserations to Ringo Starr. Apparently he was the first choice to win the Ultimate Legend award, but he must have thrown his invitation in the bin or something.

Paul McCartney has chosen to summon up all the energy in his wrinkly little body to call on his fans to boycott McDonald’s. Not because of the deforestation caused by the fast food industry’s mass farming practises, though, or McDonald’s aggressive child-centric marketing, or even the potential health risks inherent in a predominantly fast food diet.

No, Paul McCartney wants everyone to boycott McDonald’s because someone put a photo of Paul McCartney up in a Liverpool branch without asking him first. Come back next week, when Paul McCartney tries to ban abortion because he heard that someone who aborted her pregnancy once hummed three notes from Love Me Do for one and a half seconds in a shower on her own in 1975.

People often give John Lennon all the credit for being the political one in The Beatles, but that overlooks a vast portion of Paul McCartney’s oeuvre. Give Ireland Back To The Irish, for example, was a bloodied warcry for the abolition of crappy Irish-themed funpubs. Hi Hi Hi was an impassioned called for the legalisation of Hi-Tec trainers. And Dance Tonight was a thundering commentary on the uneasy political friendship between Pakistan and India, and not a cacky load of bum wanked out on a mandolin in five minutes like you thought.

Lately, though, Paul McCartney has been flexing his political muscles with a little bit more might than usual. He invoked the wrath of fundamental Islam by playing a concert in Israel recently and, what’s more, he was slightly rude about Gordon Ramsay in a supermarket magazine, too. Paul McCartney has got the fire back in his belly, that’s for sure.

And now Paul McCartney has picked his next target – McDonald’s. As a devout vegetarian, Paul McCartney has long since spoken of the environmental cost of humanity’s passion for meat, but that’s not why he’s angry at McDonald’s. Nor is it because the meagre vegetarian options on sale at McDonald’s all taste like slurry.

No, Paul McCartney has decided to go after McDonald’s because one branch in Liverpool has a picture of him in it. The bastards. Paul McCartney’s serious, too – he wants all his fans to boycott the restaurants, as The Telegraph reports:

The singer was said to be furious after discovering pictures of the Beatles had been placed prominently in a restaurant in his home town. A spokesman for Sir Paul said: “What sort of morons do McDonald’s think Beatles’ fans are. It’s ridiculous and insulting to use images to peddle hamburgers. Fans should boycott Mcdonald’s, and not just in Liverpool.”

It’s good that the spokesman managed to say “Beatles’ fans” and not “fans of Paul McCartney’s solo work,” isn’t it, because that’s the difference between a large percentage of the world’s population and a couple of old ladies with bad hearing who drink at Starbucks more often than they probably should. That would have probably been quite a crappy boycott, to be honest.

Anyway, we think that McDonald’s branches having pictures of their towns’ favourite sons is a brilliant idea – because that way people in Birmingham could eat their burgers under big pictures of UB40, residents of Brentwood could order their Egg McMuffins next to pictures of Chantelle from Big Brother and everyone in Nottingham could utilise the McDonald’s free wifi facility with several giant portraits of Dr Harold Shipman looming at them from every surface.

But still, we should probably do what Paul McCartney says and boycott McDonald’s. Otherwise he might try and kiss us, and that’d be like kissing your granny. Bleurgh.

Because if you do end up saying something bad about people from Liverpool, people from Liverpool will literally cut your head off. It’s true – they’ve just cut Ringo Starr’s head off.

Alright, at this point we should probably point out that it was only the topiary head of a topiary Ringo Starr that was chopped off, thanks to some vaguely anti-Liverpool comments Ringo made in January. But it’s still a shock, because the topiary Ringo Starr was about five or six times better at singing and drumming than the flesh and blood one.

Ringo Starr has always been the second-class Beatle – just look at the treatment he gets. John Lennon, for example, was shot in the back four times by a maniac, while George Harrison was stabbed in the chest several times by a maniac who believed he was on a mission from God. But Ringo Starr?

Ringo Starr has been aggressively pruned by what we can assume to be a fairly overenthusiastic horticulturalist. Hardly matches up, does it? The New York Times reports on the shock topiary Ringo Starr beheading:

A vandal chopped off the head of Ringo Starr from a life-size topiary of that former Beatle over the weekend in Liverpool, England, above, while leaving his band mates untouched, The Liverpool Daily Post reported. The attack occurred a few weeks after the topiary figures, created by the Italian sculptor Franco Covill, were unveiled at the South Parkway train station. “This is a huge disappointment for us,” said an unidentified spokesman for Merseytravel. “Public art is important, and the topiary was put there to bring a bit of life and soul to the public-transport network.”

It’s thought that the Ringo beheading was a direct result of some comments he made about the city back in January. You see, Liverpool is the European City Of Culture this year, and Ringo Starr was chosen to open the celebrations. After all, along with Dereck Acorah, Tom O’Connor from Crosswits and one of Atomic Kitten, Ringo Starr is probably one of history’s most famous Liverpudlians.

Not content with just opening a ceremony, Ringo Starr also wrote a special song for the occasion, entitled Liverpool 8. Probably the worst song that’s ever been written, Liverpool 8 was all about how Ringo Starr wanted to stay in Liverpool but he couldn’t because he was famous and Liverpool was a bit of a shithole but it doesn’t matter because he got famous so everyone should be proud of him. Thematically you could call it a bit confused.

So Ringo Starr went on TV and told everyone that he wouldn’t ever live in Liverpool again because there was nothing he missed about it at all, just to make it completely clear. And now he’s had his head cut off for it, French revolution-style.

If anything, this should serve as a warning to Ringo Starr to have more respect for his hometown, because the people there are easily upset by everything. First Richard And Judy left them, and now Ringo Starr too? How are they supposed to cope with such a succession of bodyblows?

So be warned, Ringo. This time they just got your topiary head, but next time it’ll be your hubcaps.

Read more:

Ringo Loses Leafy Head – NYT