I’ve had several people email me over the last couple of days wondering if Rick Astley will show up for the MTV awards. Now, I don’t have a direct line to Rick (although how cool would that be?) and I’ve had to tell people that I simply did not know….
So I decided to find out.
I emailed Rick Astley’s manager, Tony “Tops” Henderson earlier to find out if Rick is planning to show up for the EMA’s.
The Email
This was the contents of my email.
Dear Mr Henderson,
My name is Mark, I’m a 27 year old guy from Perth in Western Australia. I’m also one of the main people organising an online movement that is getting people to vote a lot for Rick Astley for his EMA nomination.
Currently we’ve logged just over 80,000 people having voted several million times between them and recently I’ve just started a campaign for people to start direct emailing MTV requesting Rick perform at the EMA’s. There has also been an online petition started which you can see the results of here http://www.petitiononline.com/2893025/petition.html
Basically, a lot of people want this to happen.
The reason why I’m emailing you today is there has been lots of talk since Rick’s BBC interview about he might not be going. I’ve seen this happen more frequently so I think to quell rumours, I figured I’d ask the source directly. Is Rick giving serious consideration to going?
Does he need convincing? I’m sure I could organise several thousand emails from people with words of support if needed.
We would love to see Rick at the event and we would definitely LOVE to see him perform if that were possible.
Thankyou for taking the time to read this email
Yours Faithfully
Mark
He quickly responded with.
Hi Mark,
thank you very much for all your hard work in persuing this event, you have managed to spin the world(in a publicity way).
in answer to your question, we have not been contacted by MTV or EMA at all! never mind an invitation, so until Rick is invited we cannot decide if he should attend or not, I must point out that he never gets invited to these music industry events, that’s probably because he has never played the celebrity game and is not deemed cool enough to attend.
Anyway I think your the sort of lad that will know whats happenning before we do, so please keep me up to date.
best tops
Ok, so it seems MTV may have been playing us, the public.
The Frustration
The thing that really annoys me, is that if you do a search for MTV EMA -”Rick Astley” in Google News (meaning only results for MTV EMA that don’t include anything about Rick Astley) over the last month you get 16 results.
Do the search “Rick Astley” EMA MTV in Google News and you get 337 results; so Rick being included has generated more than 20 times the press than on its own over the last month.
What does this mean? They’re happy to use Rick’s name for press, but haven’t even had the decency to invite him yet?
What’s even worse, is MTV have claimed they have the most democratic awards ceremony … I call bullshit.
The producer of the show, Richard Godfrey has even been quoted as saying “Rick’s fans have obviously decided that he deserves recognition as a pop icon and no doubt they are determined to make sure he wins on the night.”… Guess what Richard, he can’t win if you don’t invite him now can he.
The Call Out
Ok, so this is what I want people to do. I want everyone to PMS
1) Publicize: Send this to everyone you know, Digg it, Reddit it, Blog about it, feel free to copy/paste the emails – get the word out! WTF MTV?
2) Mobilize: Don’t just read this post, agree and do nothing about it. That will solve nothing. If this annoys you that this media organisation is dictating to you, the public again – do something.
3) Strategize – Leave comments on this thread, respond to any forum postings you may see, send me email voterick08@bestactever.com and lets figure out a plan of attack.
If you want to see Rick Astley get the award for Best Act Ever, we’re all going to have to do something about it it seems.
So let’s do it.
