“Brit Faced!”: a thread about Jarvis Cocker, Michael Jackson and the media frenzy that followed the 1996 Brit Awards. 1/31

Rehearsals for the Monday night awards ceremony began on this day 25 years ago.

Photographer @chrisfloyduk captured the calm before the storm. Here’s @therealnickbank doing some backstage contemplation and Russell Senior looking suitably hard-line. 2/31

Jacko’s Brits performance was his first UK TV appearance in 16 years. Sony Music played a big role in organising that year’s awards and they wanted nothing to get in the way of their artiste’s showpiece performance. 3/31

Somehow Jarvis was one of the few people able to watch the dress rehearsal of Jackson’s Earth Song performance. On the night itself, he blamed/credited Candida Doyle for his impulsive decision to take a stand. 4/31

There’s no point mentioning Jackson’s performance: you’ve all seen it and will have formed a view long ago about just how awful it was. 5/31

As Jarvis went to leave the ceremony he was invited into a room for ‘a discussion’ with the Brit organisers and the Met Police.

He was then arrested on suspicion of assaulting some of Jackson’s child stage performers and was taken to the nearby Kensington Police Station. 6/31

Having been locked in the police cells, Jarvis was bailed at 3am. He went to join the remaining revellers at the Oasis after-show party.

Artist Elizabeth Peyton immortalised the moment from a photo by Andy Gatt. 7/31

By 11am Pulp were back on the road heading down to Brighton for the first night of their UK arena tour. 8/31

The same day a faxed statement from Jackson’s record label referenced children being “attacked”. 9/31

While Pulp were performing in Brighton, the awards ceremony was shown on TV.

Paul Burger (Brits chairman and Sony Music boss) told the press that the incident would be edited out of the broadcast, leaving the TV audience no clearer about what had happened. 10/31

It was starting to look like a cover-up. Bernard Butler, who was sat at the same table as Jarvis, wasn’t the only one to question Sony Music’s motives. 11/31

Wednesday morning’s press coverage was predictably toxic. The assault allegations were based on the accounts of the parents of three of the child performers.

The tone of the parents’ allegations was serious, but the actual content was laughable. 12/31

“HE ACTUALLY TROD ON MY FOOT.”
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“I’D WRING HIS NECK IF I COULD.”
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Even Paul Weller’s mum had an opinion on the controversy. 15/31

The Sun’s editorial sided with Jackson. A good omen, given the paper’s history of aligning itself to the wrong side of any argument. 16/31

The newspaper cartoonists caricatured the Brits as an industry booze-up littered with loutish behaviour. No doubt they enjoyed drawing Cocker’s gangly frame. 17/31

In a bizarre move, the Daily Mirror tracked down Jarvis’ estranged father, Mack, who left home when Jarvis was seven years old. 18/31

A breakthrough came on the Friday evening when Channel 4 broadcast this footage. It backed-up the claim that Island Records had made from the outset: that Jarvis had not assaulted or shoved any of the children. 19/31

Last year Jarvis told the New York Times that David Bowie played a pivotal role in the footage being made public:

“Bowie was getting a lifetime achievement award, and he had his own camera crew there. After two or three days they released the footage.” 20/31

That footage marked a turning point. On the Sunday evening ITV broadcast an uncut version of the whole awards ceremony. Public opinion was moving overwhelmingly in Jarvis’ favour. 21/31

Two weeks later, on 11 March, Jarvis returned to Kensington Police Station to be told the charges were dropped. It appeared that Jackson’s minders, not Cocker, had injured the children. 22/31

A wry observation from The Guardian’s Gary Younge:

“His interview at Kensington Police Station had been timed to perfection: an hour after schools closed and 40 minutes before Blue Peter.”

Gotta love Lisa’s quote below. 23/31

Jarvis was then taken to the nearby Copthorne Hotel for a press conference rammed to the rafters with snappers and hacks.

He told the media, “I have not got a personal vendetta against Michael Jackson.” 24/31

Daily Mirror journalist Matthew Wright spearheaded his newspaper’s ‘Justice For Jarvis’ campaign. At the press conference he claimed that Mirror readers had bought over 4,000 Justice For Jarvis t-shirts. 25/31

So, what happened next?

Different Class stayed in the Top 40 album chart for an incredible 33 consecutive weeks.

Pulp’s USA tour passed without incident (phew!)

Years later Jarvis and his sister met up with their father Mack. 26/31

Following complaints about “offensive religious overtones”, the Independent Television Commission found that Jackson’s performance was “open to misinterpretation”.

However it didn’t uphold the complaints because the code on religious offence had not been breached. 27/31

Pulp had blown the chance to support Alanis “best international newcomer” Morissette on the Jagged Little Pill tour.

“Apparently, after the Michael Jackson thing, she wouldn’t even consider it. She thought it was a really terrible thing to do”, Jarvis told the NME. 28/31

After the tears had dried, Garner and Webb carved out successful careers in the performing arts - deservedly so.

For Jarvis, it defined part of his public image: “It tipped me into a level of celebrity I couldn’t ever had known existed, and wasn’t equipped for.” 29/31

Over the following decade the Brits became increasingly bland, possibly because they focussed on commercially successful artists who tended to behave themselves.

In 2007 the organisers dared to invite Jarvis back to present the Breakthrough Award to @TheFratellis 30/31

Pulp have still not won a Brit Award.

Do they need one? No.
Do they deserve one? Yes.

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