Morrissey’s Tour Melts Down

2:48 PM GMT 28/01/2008

ABANDONING FRIDAY’S Roundhouse show after five songs with a vocal problem, Morrissey exacerbated the crowd’s disappointment by declining to come onstage to explain the situation in person.

In his wake, snarky TV personalities Russell Brand, David Walliams and Jonathan Ross appeared onstage instead, resulting in a predicable hail of abuse and thrown objects from the crowd.

Brand, a self-confessed Morrissey fanatic, was visibly shocked by the response, and attempted to claim common cause, complaining that it wasn’t his job to make an announcement but that he’d come out “for the love of Morrissey”.

Unfortunately, the crowd was not in the mood for levity of any kind, and the impression that three smug, coked-up liggers had crashed the stage to taunt an already disappointed audience was overwhelming. When Ross promised that Walliams would entertain the crowd with 20 minutes of his “I’m A Lady!” Little Britain character – a hospital pass if ever there was one – a bloodbath looked likely to ensue, and it was at that point that the three wisely chose to take a powder.

Watch the mayhem unfold below…

A statement from Morrissey’s people later explained that the singer’s larynx had given out and that the remainder of the weekend’s Roundhouse dates would be postponed.

It is not yet clear where this leaves scheduled dates in Doncaster (Wednesday), Sunderland (Friday) and Edinburgh (Saturday), or whether the insane decision to dispatch Brand, Ross and Walliams was Morrissey’s, that of his management, or the venue’s.

For up-to-date Morrissey news, we always check out morrissey-solo.com.

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 2:48 PM GMT 28/01/2008