ITV1 to celebrate Brits anniversary

Three decades of The Brit Awards will be blown open over the coming month, with a new ITV1 programme celebrating the history of the show and a revamped and expanded Brits website.

The hour-long Brits Hits 30 will go out on ITV1 primetime on Saturday, January 9 in the run-up to what will be the 30th Brits show the following month. It will be hosted by former Spice Girl Mel B with performances from across the history of the Brits, including by Michael Jackson, The Who, Robbie Williams duetting with Tom Jones, Girls Aloud and Kylie Minogue.

During the programme, the audience will be asked to vote for their favourite performance by going to itv.com/brits or gm.tv. Voting closes on February 5 and the winner will pick up an award for the most memorable Brits performance of the last 30 years at the 2010 awards, which takes place on February 16 at Earls Court.

In addition, a revamped version of the Brits website launches on Wednesday, offering archive material such as photos, footage and performances from the last 30 years.

Brits director Maggie Crowe says that the website will allow the BPI to show off “the splendour and spectacle of the modern-day Brits” as well as the more low-key early days. “This material is up all over the place without our licence,” she says. “Let’s put it up on Brits.co.uk and cherish it.”

And she promises that the site will not whitewash the Brits history, including both the Sam Fox/Mick Fleetwood fiasco of 1989 and Brandon Block’s stage invasion of 2000. “Brits folklore is that we have the good, the bad and the ugly and we can’t help that,” she says.

Wednesday also sees the announcement of the winner of the critics choice award, as well as the opening of voting for members of the Brits Academy to decide who will win awards in February.

This is followed by a dedicated Brits Voting Day this Friday, when the 1,000 Academy members will be sent reminders to vote. Voting closes at 3pm on December 16 and nominations will be announced on Monday, January 18 at the Nominations Launch party to be held at London’s indigO2.