Lady Gaga won all three Brit Awards she was nominated for this evening including International Breakthrough Act, International Female Solo Artist and International Album. The Spice Girls picked up a special BRITs Hits award for having the most memorable performance over the last 30 years. The pop fivesome beat out the likes of The Who, Pet Shop Boys, Michael Jackson, Coldplay and Scissor Sisters, and nabbed the honor for their 1997 performance of “Wannabe/Who Do you Think You Are.”

Besides Lady Gaga, the only other stateside artist to win a Brit Award was Jay-Z, who was named International Male Solo Artist.

Full list of winners at the BRIT awards 2010:
British Male Solo Artist – Dizzee Rascal
British Female Solo Artist – Lily Allen
British Breakthrough Act – JLS
British Group – Kasabian
British Album – ‘Lungs’, Florence and the Machine
British Single – ‘Beat Again’, JLS
BRITs performance of 30 years – ‘Wannabe/Who Do You Think You Are’, Spice Girls
International Male Solo Artist – Jay-Z
International Female Solo Artist – Lady Gaga
International Breakthrough Act – Lady Gaga
International Album – ‘The Fame’ Lady Gaga
BRITs Album of 30 Years – ‘What’s The Story (Morning Glory) – Oasis
Outstanding Contribution to Music – Robbie Williams

Guns N’ Roses played their second private show in New York City on Valentine’s Day and narrowly escaped disaster.

The private Valentine’s Day concert was the hottest ticket in town, with a handpicked crowd including the Strokes’ Fabrizio Moretti and Albert Hammond Jr., Ryan Phillippe, Zoe Kravitz, Josh Lucas, Yigal Azrouel and Sophia Bush, who all packed into the Rose Bar for the DeLeon Tequila-sponsored first of Khan’s series of intimate concerts.

Guns N’ Roses played for two hours for 150 guests, finishing up at 3 a.m. before moving the party upstairs with a group of model and rocker friends until 6 a.m.

A witness reports, “The man walked in while Guns N’ Roses was onstage and pulled out a knife and flicked the blade out. Sebastian, who was standing on a banquette said: ‘Nobody is getting anywhere near my man Axl Rose with a knife,’ and went after him. Security then immediately threw him out.

The band played for two hours at the Nur Khan’s Rose Bar Sessions. Mickey Rourke, Sophia Bush and Josh Lucas were in attendance.

As golfers lined up putts in respectful silence below, a small airplane circled over last week’s PGA Tour event in San Diego – dragging a banner reading, “We miss you Tiger! Deja vu Showgirls.” The next day, a competing strip club countered with a plane toting this message: “We miss you too Tiger! Dreamgirls.”

This is the strange, new realm professional golf now inhabits, where strip clubs jostle for business in the airspace above tournaments.

By most accounts, Tiger Woods originally planned to play in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, which starts Thursday. That would have created quite a scene: Woods, probably the world’s most famous athlete, strolling the picturesque fairways on the Monterey Peninsula for the first time in eight years.

Then, on Nov. 27, he drove his sport utility vehicle into a fire hydrant and a tree outside his Florida home – triggering a salacious sex scandal that includes allegations of numerous extramarital affairs. The story shook the PGA Tour to its core and prompted Woods to take an indefinite leave as he tries to salvage his marriage.

As the tour swings through Northern California, it’s clearly not the same without Woods, the world’s No. 1 player and the game’s defining figure. His absence has added another layer to the challenges facing professional golf, already coping with the effects of the nation’s slumping economy.

The efforts to overcome this double whammy are meeting with mixed results. Commissioner Tim Finchem said the tour has extended sponsorship agreements, or brought in new sponsors, for 15 events in the past few months. Prize money is comparable to what it was in 2009 (about $275 million) and Finchem anticipates the tour’s charitable giving to rebound from a 12 percent drop last year.

Then again, the tour could not find a title sponsor for last month’s Bob Hope Classic in Palm Springs. It reached a last-minute deal with Farmers Insurance to sponsor the tournament at San Diego’s Torrey Pines, reportedly for an amount well below normal. Players were not provided courtesy cars, a rare development in their coddled world.

Measuring impact

David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute, acknowledged it’s difficult to measure the impact of Woods’ absence, given the other variables involved, most notably the economy. But Carter also pointed out golf’s struggle to connect with mainstream sports fans when “name-brand” players such as Woods or Phil Mickelson are not in contention on Sundays.

By Ron Kroichick, Chronicle Staff Writer

The mud-slinging at NBC over its late-night debacle is getting increasingly vicious, with reports that the network is threatening to bar Conan O’Brien from television over his refusal to take his show to a 12:05 time slot.

Reports also state that part of bad blood is due to a deep personal resentment between O’Brien and Jay Leno. NBC wants Leno to take over the 11:35 time slot traditionally held by The Tonight Show, which O’Brien currently hosts. It wants Leno to host a half-hour show, which would move The Tonight Show back to 12:05.

After O’Brien declared he wouldn’t do that on Wednesday, NBC honcho Jeff Zucker “is threatening to ice Conan,” sources told Nikki Fine at deadline.com.

Zucker’s people told Fine: “Zucker said, ‘I’ll keep you off the air for 3 1/2 years.’ Which doesn’t have a chance in hell of happening. What I really think Zucker wants is to hold him off the market for at least six months to a year until the dust settles and Leno is secure and Conan is squelched.”

The report goes on to say the O’Brien camp says NBC wants to sack their man completely, and get Leno to re-take the helm of The Tonight Show. Part of Zucker’s plot includes keeping Conan of the air for the duration of his contract with NBC. (Meanwhile celebrity website TMZ is reporting that NBC has already struck a new contract with Leno, giving him the 11:35-12:35 time slot at the network.)

It’s apparent NBC is frantically seeking a way to clean up the late-night mess they’ve made. For years with Johnny Carson and Jay Leno, The Tonight Show ruled the late-night roost, providing the network with prestige and big ad dollars. But Zucker’s move last year to give O’Brien the Tonight job and move Leno to 10 p.m. has proved to be a gift to David Letterman and CBS, with his Late Night show zooming to the top of the ratings.

Adding to the schmozzle is the personal animosity separating O’Brien and Leno, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. That paper’s Bill Zwecker says that people in both camps say the two comics have had “a long-simmering mini-feud.”

Leno apparently figures O’Brien hasn’t paid his show-biz dues in his route to hold the much-coveted Tonight Show job.

Zwecker cites a Leno insider: ‘‘Jay has always been skeptical of Conan, the Harvard-educated kid from an upper-middle-class background who basically parlayed his writing stints on The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live into one of the most coveted TV hosting jobs in the world.’’

Leno himself has a working-class background whose talent and famous work ethic has propelled him from comedy club to television stardom.

Meanwhile, the Sun-Times reports that O’Brien and his people look down at Leno’s comedy as old fashioned. ‘‘He’s really pretty dated, as far as most of us are concerned,’’ a member of Conan’s team said.

Adding to the feud is O’Brien’s feeling Leno betrayed him by accepting Zucker’s offer to move back to the 11:35 slot.

For more entertainment news and features, check out vancouversun.com/entertainment

Meanwhile, NBC has announced it will replace Leno at 10 p.m. with crime dramas, new shows and the news magazine Dateline. it will fill the 10 p.m. holes in its prime-time television lineup left by Jay Leno with crime dramas, new Mondays and Wednesdays the network will run Law& Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. On Tuesdays, it will feature a new drama called Parenthood; on Thursdays Jerry Seinfeld returns to the network with The Marriage Ref.

“Good morning Upper East Siders, Gossip Girl here, you’re one and only guide to Manhattan’s elite.” The quote that started it all. Gossip Girl is a television series based from the book of the same name.

It is also obvious that Gossip Girl’s target audience is for girls but even guys get hooked.  Basically the show is mostly about a group of teenagers aged around 14-18 who attend a rather elite high school, St Jude’s, which is based in New York’s Upper East Side. Gossip Girl is a narrator, who is unseen during season 1 and so far in season 2.

Within the main characters there are various relationships – Blair and Nate are portrayed as the perfect society couple at the start of the season but as the season progresses we see there are many cracks in their relationship, including a naughty encounter Nate has with Serena just before her self-imposed exile. Serena is determined not to rekindle their fling on her return as she is Blair’s best friend and was the “Queen” before she ran away and Blair assumed that particular position in the school “gang”. Then Serena and Dan fall for each other, a relationship which is highly discouraged by her best friend Blair who treats Dan like something she stepped on and is made more complicated by the fact that Serena’s mother and Dan’s father were once lovers.

Some might compare Gossip Girl with the recently revived Beverly Hills, 90210. At the time of writing (January 2009) Gossip Girl has won several awards since its conception including Teen Choice Award 2008 for TV Show Drama, TV Villain (Chuck), Breakout Female (Serena) and Breakout Male (Dan).