If there's a danger of the Pet Shop Boys' glass-half-empty attitude putting a bit of a damper on the kids' Christmas spirits, then this could completely creep them out.

Given the over-subscribed portfolio of possible song choices usually involved, you can hardly blame the Pet Shop Boys for cutting their artistic losses and settling for a Christmas EP rather than a full album.

"What the album 'Yes' lacks in dynamism, it makes up for in simple pop-song craft, and the set's ringers — the break-up number "The Way it Used to Be" and the melancholic "King of Rome" — are a match for any songs in their history." - Paul Isaacs, eyeweekly.com

Three years on from the splendid Fundamental, the Pet Shop Boys have ditched producer Trevor Horn in favour of Brian Higgins's Xenomania team, in what seems like a brazen grab for something a little more teen-pop-conscious.

But, while the results offer perfectly acceptable revisions of standard PSB tropes, one can't help thinking it's all a bit underwhelming. The Xenomania collaboration seems at best unnecessary: it's not as if they couldn't have knocked out a lolloping electro-stomper like "Pandemonium" on their own – or, for that matter, most of the tracks. The main difference is that these performances are both slicker and less memorable than one would expect, while the lyrics, with one or two exceptions, are forgettable rehearsals of romantic clichés barely tweaked into life by Neil Tennant's wry wit. The exceptions again focus on what's getting lost: "Vulnerable" finds him complaining, albeit mildly, about "surviving in the public eye", while "Legacy" betrays the kind of unease at modern life that simply won't register on technophiliac pop kids' radars. Hardly surprising, then, that when he starts unspooling fond childhood memories of Albion in "Building a Wall", Chris Lowe should offer the sarky interjection, "Who'd you think you are – Captain Britain?"

Fresh from their Brit Award for Lifetime Achievement, electropop duo Pet Shop Boys have announced that they're working on a ballet. The new work, to be based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, will be staged at Sadler's Wells in 2011. Choreography will be by Javier de Frutos – until recently director of Phoenix Dance Theatre – with a scenario by writer and director Matthew Dunster. The Royal Ballet's Ivan Putrov is expected to dance a leading role. Two scenes have already been workshopped at Sadler's Wells.

It was a glamorous, glitzy affair. Duffy’s smoky soul songs triumphed. The crowd went crazy. The pair from Gavin and Stacey seemed an imaginative choice to host the event alongside Kylie Minogue. The Pet Shop Boys gave a superb performance. And there were welcome cameos from Estelle, the Ting Tings and Brandon Flowers of the Killers. Even Girls Aloud sounded almost as good as they looked. Almost.

From James Corden and Mathew Horne's red and black rubber outfits as Kylie Minogue's backing dancers, to Duffy's plunging red gown while performing Warwick Avenue, outfits wowed at the Brits.

With their gold-lamé suits and leopard-skin posing pouches, Boney M helped bring a much-needed touch of the exotic to Britain in the gloomy, crisis-hit days of the late 1970s. And for the scantily clad, German-manufactured disco stars, 1978 was to be their high-water mark, a year in which they sold more than three million singles in the UK as well as notching up a platinum album.