Jules wrote:

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Listening to music, how? I suppose it must get boring receiving award after award , especially if you have a low boredom threshold!!

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I’m surprised to see some of you get German tv!

Well I watched it last night too. Actually, the ceremony was taking place in the building of the media publisher Axel Springer, which is about ten minutes from my office and fifteen minutes from my home.

As someone said, before Bob got the award, he was shown in the audience, wearing a headset where he obviously got translations to what was going on onstage. He looked incredibly bored, and very tired. I don’t know if I’m wrong but it seems to me that Bob gets ever so tired of those ceremonies, and yet he just seems driven by the cause that he has to do them!

The guy who held the honorific speech and handed the award to Bob was Wolfgang Niedecken, the singer with the German band BAP (he’s in one of the photos, I think one of yours Reka). Wolfgang has been involved with fundraising and humanitarian work as well, also he seems to be a friend of Bob’s, this maybe originating in the ‘nineties, when Bob toured for several weeks with BAP, Dave Stewart and Fury ITS.

Bob then talked for about six or seven minutes about the success of Live8 and how important it was to remind the new chancellor Merkel to keep the promise that was made (then by former chancellor Schröder) in July last year. Bob also told the audience what had been accomplished just because the so-and-so-many thousand Germans had supported him in July: This number of children have been healed of polio, that number of wells could be dug... He kept emphasizing how great the achievement was and that going on with the effort was something that had be done.

All in all, the message of that speech was the right one. I think Germans need this form of direct addressing, if you know what I mean, because so many people here think we’re on the verge of becoming a poor country, when in reality we’re among the richest in the world!

As someone mentioned, Bob doesn’t exactly seem to click with the host of the “Goldene Kamera” ceremony, generally well-liked and very famous tv presenter Thomas Gottschalk. Bob did not shake his hand before he left the stage (I think Wolfgang got a hug) and there was some kind of taunting going on between the two, which I could well imagine may have started off stage... Bob said he’d played in Gottschalk’s afternoon show years ago with the Rats… I don’t remember why and I hope I got this right, but Gottschalk compared Bob to Bill Clinton (??), to which Bob replied “Me? No, I’m sexier”! ROFL (This was not part of the German translation, which was - horrible - much louder than Bob's voice. Hate that!)

Needless to say, I can’t stand Gottschalk at all, I think he’s outright embarrassing, without any sense for situations or people.

Bob also joked that he would be wrecking the hotel room in the hotel Adlon (which is the poshest place to stay in the whole of Berlin) – Wolfgang had made some kind of remark in his speech that Bob had decided against a rock career with hotel wrecking but for humanitarian work, etc.

eta:

This is the main site of the ZDF, with a photo gallery of last night (one photo of Bob only):

And here is a short video, but Bob is only shown at the very beginning:

Promis und Preise: Goldene Kamera