KEY POINTS:
Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement said they weren't in LA for the Grammys because they were at home waiting for the writers' strike to end. It wouldn't have looked good had they flown all that way and then won the thing. It would've looked like they knew they were going to win. Except, what if they were there? What if everyone signed confidentiality agreements so the Conchords wouldn't be accused of having big heads back home? And what if TimeOut had acquired a top-secret transcript of their acceptance speech?
Bret: Wow, we really didn't expect this. This is a big surprise. Thank you.
Jemaine: Yes, thank you very much for this extraordinary accolade. We were going to do this by satellite because the album's called The Distant Future and they always do things by satellite in the future. But Amy Winehouse beat us to it. It would've looked like we were copying.
Bret: Who would've thought that in 2008 we'd be able to beam singers back from the past?
Jemaine: We'd like to thank Murray. He's our manager. He's the one who said we should enter so we owe this award to him. I think we also owe him $500 so we might have to give him this instead.
Bret: And we'd like to thank our fans. Fan.
Jemaine: Thanks Mel. For always being there for us. Like, when we got up this morning and you were there, lying on the front porch in a sleeping bag. It's really nice that you hitched all the way from New York to be here.
Bret: And the time you told everyone that Jemaine didn't actually wet himself because he had stage-fright, it was just beer. I'd also like to personally thank David Bowie.
Jemaine: Don't, Bret.
Bret: But he gave me some good advice.
Jemaine: No, you had a dream that he told you to do something outrageous and you showed your wanger to the man at the greeting card company.
Bret: I painted lightning rods on it, it would've been a waste not to.
Jemaine: We'd like to pay tribute to our fellow nominees because we wouldn't be winners if it wasn't for all the losers.
Bret: I'd also like to pay tribute to the person who won Best Instrumental Soloist Performance without Orchestra. That's tough.
Jemaine: And congratulations to the person who won Best Surround Sound Album. We were going to enter that one but we didn't have enough copies. We had three stereos because Murray did a deal and swapped our leather jackets for a ghettoblaster and Mel said we could use her one and we were going to set up the stereos around the room but -
Bret: It didn't work.
Jemaine: And big-ups to the finalists in the Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package award.
Bret: We were going to enter that too but Murray got us to make another copy of the album so we could enter the Grammys. And it wasn't really in a box.
Jemaine: No, it was more like an envelope.
Bret: We'd like to thank our country. We're really proud to be New Zealanders right now. Last week it wasn't so good but right now we're really enjoying it.
Jemaine: While we're up here, we should really apologise for something a New Zealander did at the last awards ceremony that had a New Zealander at it.
Bret: What, Lord of the Rings? You should be proud of that, Jemaine.
Jemaine: No, the time Taika [Waititi] was at the Oscars. He yawned on camera. Sorry about that. He was a bit jet-lagged.
