Madonna fell off the stage at the Brit Awards and we laughed because we’re sadistic

Go on, admit it, you laughed, didn’t you?

When Madonna was yanked off the stage by a dancer pulling her cloak during her finale performance at the Brit Awards, you gasped in horror for one brief moment and then… you laughed out loud. Then you pressed ‘rewind’ and watched it again. And then once more for luck. Because it’s not often we get to watch a celebrity fall flat on their face – or in Madonna’s case, flat on her back.

The fact that we were watching a 56-year-old mother of four fall downstairs and smash to the ground – that this was not normally something we would or should find funny – did not seem to occur to us. That every newspaper, website and TV station in the country (indeed, the world) is still laughing along with us probably doesn’t help either.

But actually the entire Madonna-is-a-goner episode betrays a sadistic streak in our national psyche when it comes to women who don’t do what we expect them to do.