It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that the glittering, star-studded party that is the MTV EMA Awards rolled into Scotland yesterday – and what an immense night it was for all.
Of course, it almost goes without saying that I don’t know my Calvin Klein from my Calvin Harris, but, looked at purely from a business point of view, this occasion at the Glasgow Hydro had everything, rounding off a truly stellar year for our country. MTV knows how to do big, and it seriously brought the fireworks long after the last embers of Guy Fawkes Night had faded, with pop perfection, rap royalty, and dance devotees all threatening to blow the lid off the place.
It’s worth noting that, aside from the significant profile-raising that such a globally watched event brings to the host city, there are always huge spin-offs for local business too. I wasn’t surprised then to see that the EMAs are expected to generate a massive £10million injection for Glasgow, boosting takings for everything from hotels and restaurants, to shops and bars.
Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (GCMB), with support from EventScotland, must be applauded for their long work on this project, ensuring that discussions with the music broadcasting giant were maintained over the last few years, culminating in the successful securing of the EMAs in 2014.
Now it’s paid off handsomely and the city has been laughing all the way to the bank after being showcased to more than half a billion households worldwide.
Nevertheless, it’s not all one-way traffic. MTV evidently didn’t forget the fantastic reception that it received when our country last hosted the same event back in 2003, and it has certainly benefitted from its Scotland links. Funnily enough, if feels like not too much has changed in the music industry since that night at Edinburgh’s Ocean Terminal; back then, the big winners were Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, and Coldplay. Eleven years on, and they’re still very much the global acts to beat.
It just goes to show that true quality is enduring, and that’s exactly what Scotland is now producing. In Glasgow, MTV clearly saw a host city that it could count on to deliver for the big 20th anniversary of its iconic awards.
After a packed 2014 calendar of major events, you could even argue that MTV was lucky to be hosted by us, with the beacon-like Hydro looking stunning, both inside and out, and one of the world’s best audiences just begging to be entertained. We certainly showed up last year’s lacklustre bash in Amsterdam.
From the SECC and Clyde Auditorium, to the Barrowlands Ballroom and King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow simply lives and breathes music, and with the peerless Hydro at the centre of the excitement and now firing on all cylinders, it’s exactly where the biggest and best acts want to be. It’s part of a reciprocal relationship, a shared heritage, that goes right back to the hugely popular music halls of the early 20th century, during an era that saw Stan Laurel make his first stage appearance in Glasgow, through to the great Glasgow Apollo venue at the top of Renfield Street which hosted so many great rock acts and even catapulted some to fame.
It’s thanks to this relationship that the city is something of a spiritual home for many musicians. We have the best fans, the best atmospherics – and now the very best backdrops too. MTV, you’re welcome. We’ll see you again in 2025.
Force is Fact Not Fiction
Last week we learned that the new Star Wars film will have the title: The Force Awakens.
This new blockbuster is shaping up to be the most anticipated new film of 2015, and with a new Star Trek film on the horizon, Sci-Fi fans have a lot to look forward to.
The thing is – these films just might not be as fictitious as we’ve been led to believe.
Physicists from Glasgow University and Imperial College London have looked into the fantastic technologies that previously only existed due to clever special effects, and have predicted that many of them will be developed within the lifetimes of children living today.
While Star Trek style teleportation might seem ludicrous, there is actually nothing in the laws of physics to say that it is impossible. Dr Mary Jacqueline Romero from Glasgow University predicts that teleportation could be developed in around sixty-five years.
Cloaking technology, such as that which turns aircraft invisible in the Marvel movies, has already begun to be developed. It could be with us before 2040.
And as for time travel – would you be surprised to know that it already exists.
Last year Sergei Krikalev, a Russian Cosmonaut, returned to earth following more than two years in space to discover that he had travelled 0.02 seconds into the future.
It has been estimated that in a century we could have time machines capable of sending us several weeks into the future.
But if you were hoping to time-travel into the past, that could still be some way off.
It Made Me Laugh: Dance Your PhD
University Coursework can be a nightmare. Not only do you have to get your head around some pretty complicated ideas, but everything has to be laid out perfectly.
The rules that govern academic writing are byzantine and Kafkaesque – many students have been frustrated by losing marks for improperly formatted footnotes or stray commas in the bibliography.
So it was great to see that Uma Nagenra, a PhD student from the University of Georgia, chose to present her PhD through the medium of dance.
Her research into the effect of natural disasters on the environment demonstrated that tornados and forest fires can be beneficial – if you’re a tree.
For her efforts she won the ‘dance your PhD’ award from the Journal of Science.
It Made Me Weep: New Docs Hard to Swallow
I come from a generation that learned about the natural world from David Attenborough documentaries. These were intelligent, informative and a great chance to see the wonders of the world around us.
So it’s disheartening to hear the extreme lengths that the next generation of wildlife film-makers are going to in order to attract an audience.
A wild-life expert called Paul Rosolie has announced that for his documentary he will be swallowed alive by an anaconda – a snake that can grow longer than 6 metres and crushes its prey to death before eating them.
Paul Rosolie claims that he will wear a snake-proof suit, though it’s not even clear what a snake-proof suit consists of – or how anyone could possibly test such a thing.
Bring back the days when an intelligent presenter who really knew their stuff was enough to capture the interest of the public.
