If you asked us the best way to meet a girl and maintain it in to a relationship, we may just say something inappropriate like “get her drunk first”. So it may be a good thing our decisions aren’t always right. Last night saw Elbow win the Mercury Music Prize for their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid.

While we put £10 on Burial to win, he failed to turn up to the event to perform. This probably didn’t do him any favours but who knows and who cares. But fair play to him really, he wants to remain anonymous and not deal with being stalked by NME journalists. At least the award didn’t go to the Last Shadow Puppets who already have a winning connection to the Arctic Monkeys. Looking slightly pissed on stage, Elbow frontman Guy Garvey said “it was the best thing to have ever happened to us”. Aww, they are a cracking band who do deserve some fame. We even harped on about them needing a break in a recent gig review.

Now, that’s 2008 out of the way. Who will be up for the 2009 award? With upcoming releases from Kaiser Chiefs, Razorlight, Keane and Snow Patrol, it could be a bland indie-filled ceremony next year. Though we’ll see if our recordings of smashed cups, sawed logs and imitations of badgers will pick up a nomination. Against frontmen who make twigs look fat and poor moonfaced posh boys, we should do OK. Well, in our minds anyway.

Not because Big Brother’s finished, mind you. We’re sad because it means there’ll be a load more ex-Big Brother housemates flouncing around in public thinking that they’re megastars now. That just sort of makes us throw ourselves out of a window, really.

But enough of that. Big Brother final, woo! Who’s going to win, huh? Here are the Big Brother betting odds for the two favourites – Rachel and Mikey – with help from Paddy Power…

Rachel - If there was any justice in the world then Rachel would win Big Brother, simply for the fact that she’s not as utterly objectionable as any of the other remaining housemates. Sure, she’s not exactly solid gold entertainment – in fact, you could have put a picture of a poo in a cup into the Big Brother house in Rachel’s place and you’d have probably got better value for money – but there’s one question you need to ask yourself. Who would you rather see the Big Brother prize money given to – any of the hopeless grasping tits that are in the Big Brother house, or Rachel the lovely levelheaded schoolteacher lady? What? You think that Rachel should get the money? Are you kidding? Look – if none of the others win, they’ll be so desperate for money that they’ll all try and become TV presenters and singers and actors and it’ll be terrible and British culture will never properly recover from it. You idiots. Current Big Brother betting odds – 5/2

Mikey - Well colour us wrong -the British public really are a bunch of snivelling pity-hungry bell ends after all. Why else would Mikey be the favourite to win Big Brother tonight? His compassion? His staggering wit? His superhuman good-looks? If Mikey wins Big Brother it’ll be because he’s blind and nothing else. Of course, that’s assuming that Mikey is going to win Big Brother – he’s never been up for eviction, so his popularity is only based on what the other Big Brother housemates think of him. For all we know, all the Big Brother viewers might think that Mikey is a big sightless wanker. Who knows – we’ll find out later on. At least one thing’s for sure, though – if Mikey does win Big Brother, all those fireworks that usually accompany the winner will be wasted. Honestly, if Endemol was smart it’d keep the receipts and just get a load of people to pop a couple of hundred crisp packets instead. Mikey’s never going to know, is he? Current Big Brother betting odds -11/10

Next week: Something else that isn’t Big Brother. But don’t forget that you can still head right over to Paddy Power to see the full list of Big Brother betting odds and place one last bet.

Amy Winehouse actually managed to sing in tune.

But, yes, Amy Winehouse won five Grammys last night – for Best Record, Best Song, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Pop Vocal Performance and Best New Artist. And Amy's elation was clear for all the Grammy viewers to see. That's because, at current market value, she'll be able to trade the Grammys in for a big bag of crack on the streets.

The organisers of the Grammys know that they're in charge of a long, ultimately dull ceremony that only Wayfarer-wearing ponytailed middle-aged record executives can honestly admit to being interested in. But to their credit, for last night's show, they decided to give the show more appeal by making it personal. Almost uncomfortably so, in fact.  

Kanye West, for example, sung a song about his dead mother. And Amy Winehouse managed to take a song a song about her current rehab situation and pepper it with references to her jailed husband. The way it was going, we were genuinely surprised that Tina Turner didn't use her Grammys duet with Beyonce to debut a new song called I'm Glad That Old Fucker Died. 

Still, though, despite the weird tabloidy air of proceedings, last night's Grammys were really only about Amy Winehouse. Although she was nominated for six Grammys, Amy wasn't allowed a visa to attend the ceremony because of that pesky 'crack-smoking' video of hers. So as an alternative, Amy Winehouse got to perform by satellite instead. But even that was wracked with uncertainty.

For example, nobody knew if Amy Winehouse would have a full set of teeth in for the performance, or whether she'd offer out the entire Grammys viewing audience as she's so fond of doing during performances. Amy could have – as she's appeared to do in the past – pulled drugs out of her beehive and ram them up her nose while singing. Or she could have done what she's done uniformly for the last year and turned in a lazy vocal that sounds like the Cloverfield monster trying to do a Chewbacca impression during a karaoke version of Baby Love.

But no. What Amy Winehouse actually did was sing normally while looking vaguely healthy. We know, it was hard for us to take in, too, so here's a video for proof…

Other Grammy winners included Kanye West, Justin Timberlake, Foo Fighters and just about everyone else who seems to win Grammys every year anyway. But last night was Amy Winehouse's night, and her non-rubbish performance coupled with her five Grammys for Best Record, Best Song, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Pop Vocal Performance and Best New Artist could very well open a new chapter in her life.

Perhaps all this adulation will mean that Amy Winehouse will clean up her act for good and never do anything newsworthy ever again. And if that's the case, we're going out of business. Nice knowing you all.

Read more:

Grammys Serve Up Winehouse on Tap – E! Online 

But also there's a chance that Jay Leno will sue you and win. And that's what's just happened. Jay Leno has just won a lawsuit against Judy Brown, who published compendiums containing jokes stolen from his routines.

And as a result Judy Brown will have to publish something less funny instead, like… nope, there isn't any less funny than one of Jay Leno's jokes. 

This writers' strike has been tough on a lot of people, but none have suffered quite as much as Jay Leno. For the strike means that Jay Leno has to host his big-rated nightly hour-long talkshow completely unscripted. And if anything that even so much as looks like a scripted moment occurs, Jay Leno gets called a bastard by the entire WGA.

Worse still, movie stars don't want to cross the picket lines to appear on Jay Leno's show, so he's been reduced to interviewing people like Jimmy Kimmel – which is basically the equivalent of shouting questions into an empty, vaguely ape-shaped, well.

But things aren't completely bleak for Jay Leno because he's just managed to sue the ass off a woman who stole some of his jokes for compendiums she put together. Reuters reports:

The publishers of such compendiums as "Jokes to Go," "Comedy Thesaurus" and "The Funny Pages" vowed to immediately stop printing and distributing the books in a settlement with Leno and fellow comedians who sued author Judy Brown. "In my books, I have published jokes of Jay Leno and the other comedians in this lawsuit without their permission," Brown said in a statement. "I sincerely apologize for doing so. I greatly admire the creativity, wit and energy of stand-up comedians, and I recognize that comedy is as much an art form as other types of creative expression."

Ethically it's a tricky one. On the one hand Judy Brown obviously put Jay Leno's jokes in her books because she's such a big fan of his, and it looks a little unfair when a multimillionaire TV star sues his fans.

But on the other hand, Judy Brown is a Jay Leno fan, so she's probably mad as a biscuit and deserves to be shut away in a lightless box for the rest of her life.

See? We told you it was a tricky one. 

Read more: 

Jay Leno gets last laugh on joke books - Reuters