Last night they loved you…
The 48-year-old DJ/TV presenter rounded off the evening nicely by treating himself to the print after he was awarded with the Music Industry Trusts (MITs) award for the exposure he has given to new artists.
Bryan Ferry, Four Poofs and a Piano, who provide musical accompaniment on the BBC’s Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, and Stereophonics frontman Kelly Jones all performed at the event, which was attended by more than 1,000 people from the UK music and entertainment industry. Among those there were Noel Gallagher, the band Sparks and Russell Brand.
A host of Ross’s celebrity friends also left video messages congratulating him, including Bjork, Cheryl Cole, Brandon Flowers, Harry Hill, Sir Tom Jones, Will Smith, U2, Rufus Wainwright and Dame Vivienne Westwood.
Singer George Michael presented Ross with the gong during the evening of tributes at a ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel in London, which included a message of congratulations sent from DB earlier in the evening that was read out by host Paul Gambaccini.
We are glad to be able to exclusively reveal the full content of that message here…
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My dear Jonathan,
Huge congratulations on your award and so well deserved. Your guitar work is extravagantly revered in this house.
I have both your albums and play them continuously. Did you know that if you play them both at the same time your w’s turn to r’s?
I’ll pop over to London at some point and we can pick up on that sonata we started writing last time. I think it needs some funk though. Get Ricky involved.
Now eat, drink and make merry for it will all end in a lustrum.
David Bowie
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The lithograph was The Dhead – Outside (see background above) of which David said this on
The 25.5 x 20cm print was originally available through
It has long since been unavailable and the fact that Jonathan shelled out an extraordinary £20,000 (approx. $33, 000 USD at current rates) just goes to show what a generous chap he is…but then again, it was all in aid of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy and the Brit School.
This morning I asked Jonathan what he made of the evening, this was his reply…
“It was a weird night. A bit like a cheese-inspired dream. But fun. The words from the big man were the icing on the cake.”
Jonathan has a long history of Bowie appreciation, and, aside from having DB on his TV show a couple of times, he has also been the compere at a couple of special Bowie events, the 2002 Maida Vale Radio 2 gig which was re-broadcast last week (10.27.2009 REMINDER: BOWIE’S MAIDA VALE 2002 BBC SHOW REPEATED THURSDAY) and the BowieNet member’s only Reality cinema recording at Riverside in 2003 to name but two.
To this day, Ross still plays a Bowie tune every week on his Saturday morning show…a privilege no other artist enjoys.
Congratulations Jonathan, and as David says…so well deserved.