On Monday 6th October 2008 at the 19th Q Magazine Awards, held at Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London, Adam Ant was presented with the 2008 Icon Award.

The awards ceremony has been held by the respected UK magazine since 1990 where the Icon Award has been given as a special recognition to artists, where some of the previous winners have included Jimmy Page, Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney, Jane's Addiction and U2.

Adam was accompanied to the Awards ceremony by his partner Clare and Morrissey guitarist and former writing partner, Boz Boorer .

They shared a table with BEST NEW ACT, BEST TRACK , BEST VIDEO nominees the Tings Tings.

As Adam walked up to get the award, which was being presented to him by the Sugarbabes, he was given a standing ovation.

Q Magazine has been holding the awards ceremonies in London since 1990, where they have now become one of the major music events in the UK.

The Q Magazine website states that the event is “A unique and intimate celebration with arguably the world’s highest concentration of musical talent and fame.”

The Q Magazine website reported on the presentation shortly after Adam had received the award

One-time ‘dandy highwayman’ and Prince Charming, Adam Ant, was today named Q Icon at the 2008 Q Awards with Russian Standard Vodka.

The 53-year-old singer was behind a string of hits during the 1980s both as frontman for The Ants and as a solo star, including Kings Of The Wild Frontier, Antmusic and Goody Two Shoes. Ant – real name Stuart Goddard – successfully reinvented himself musically and image-wise on numerous occasions, successfully straddling the punk and New Romantic movements and coping with the loss of his entire band when Malcolm McClaren persuaded them to ditch him and form BowWowWow.

Collecting the title, Ant said: "It's very good to be standing here. It’s very good to be standing actually! I’ve always loved music and I like music that looks good as well. Forgive me for that. And I’ll be collecting my catalogue royalties from Coldplay later on (a reference to the Ant-like outfits the band were wearing). "It does mean a lot for Q to reward me with this award and you will never know how much it means to me," he added.

XFM reported with the headline;
Prince Charming collars Ricky Wilson and Nick Hodgson at the Q Awards to suggest a possible collaboration.

Ricky Wilson has told Xfm that a meeting between the Kasier Chiefs and Adam Ant at the Q Awards could yield a possible songwriting opportunity. Ricky Wilson, clearly star-struck by the encounter, told our intrepid Xfm newshound, Sunta Templeton:

“I just met Adam Ant. We told him we liked his stuff because there’s touches of it on our new record. He said, ‘Oh, you should write me a song’. Nick said ‘That would be a good idea’, and he said ‘I’ll sing it in a minute’. As soon as he said it, I just thought that was a fantastic name for a song”.

Ricky, however, was doubtful that this temporary awards ceremony love-in would blossom into something definite.

“Will it happen? I doubt it, but it’s nice to fantasise of an evening”.

Metro.co.uk reported on the ceremony in several articles but seemed determined to undermine Adam's achievement, the first being with the actual headline The Good, bad and Ugly grace Q awards with photographs of Chris Martin (Coldplay), Adam and then Grace Jones

The best that they felt that they could write about was regarding Adam's recent history "Adam Ant, real name Stuart Goddard, was awarded the Q Icon prize. But recently it's his reputation as a bad old boy of pop which have made the headlines, after a series of run-ins with police."

A further article tried to play up that there had been some form of bitterness and rivalry between Adam and Coldplay for their use of military imagery for their latest album.

Coldplay 'ripped me off' ran the unimaginative headline, where the article stated that
"Coldplay were branded a bunch of rip offs after legendary Adam Ant shot the boys down in flames for copying his trademark style at the Q awards."

When the actual quote in question was taken out of context from Adam's speech for the playful banter that it was: "I’ll be collecting my catalogue royalties from Coldplay later on!"
As Coldplay drummer, Will Champion, collected the award for best act in the world, he continued in a similar humorous vein by responding to Adam Ant’s crack that the band had stolen their sartorial ideas from him. “Thanks to Q for inviting Adam Ant and making us all look like fucking wankers,” Champion said

BT Vision gave the best compliment stating that:
The best speech came from Adam Ant, who won a Q Icon award. The singer said: “It’s good to be standing here. It’s very good to be standing, actually.”

Later Live... with Jools Holland

On the 7th October edition of Jools' UK BBC2 show during an interview with Chris Martin of Coldplay, the subject of the awards ceremony was brought up:

Jools - "At the awards ceremony Adam Ant said, in the kindest possible way, but he thought that you had rather taken his style. What do you say to Adam Ant?
I mean in the clothing that... these very nice things that you've ... got" (pointing to the band's military style jackets)

Chris Martin - "Well, we... we are never one to deny when we've stolen from Adam Ant...
...and we have stolen from Adam Ant!"

Jools - "Somebody had to!

Chris Martin - "so... we did it!"

Picture below:
Boz, Adam and Fran Healey

Adam confronted with a wall of press

Adam posing with Kaiser Chiefs