Watch Bob Mortimer reveal if he had a ‘Brat’ summer
Bob Mortimer has revealed whether he had a ‘Brat’ summer in 2024 – check out his endearing response below.
The comedian was appearing on Nick Grimshaw’s show on BBC Radio 6 Music on Friday (November 29), promoting his latest book The Hotel Avocado.
In a moment captured on the station’s Instagram feed, Grimshaw asked Mortimer whether he had a ‘Brat’ summer, referencing the culture-straddling phenomenon of Charli XCX’s album of the same name and its associated movement that dominated the summer of 2024.
“A what?” Mortimer replies. “What on earth does that mean?”
“I’m 66, Brat?! Like, aggressive? I didn’t have an aggressive summer at all, no,” he added, laughing. “It was very peaceful.”
‘Brat’ was Charli’s sixth studio album and was released in June, drawing from club and rave music and coming with a striking and immediately iconic lime green cover, with pixelated Arial font lowercase wording.
The shade of green became ever-present throughout the summer, with a ‘Brat generator’ tool surfacing online allowing fans to replace the album title with text of their choosing.
Charli fans began poring over the album’s lyrics for deeper meanings, while they also began speculation about the fact that it debuted at Number Two on the UK Albums Chart, behind a well-timed deluxe reissue of Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’.
Tracks like ‘360’ and ‘Apple’ had their own viral TikTok crazes, while a remix album ‘Brat And It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat’ landed in October, finally bringing Charli to Number One.
‘Brat’ was named the Word Of The Year by the Collins English Dictionary, a word it said had been redefined by the phenomenon, with its new definition being: “characterised by a confident, independent and hedonistic attitude”.
‘Brat’ summer even became a factor in the 2024 US presidential election when Charli tweeted “Kamala IS brat”. The vice-president’s social media was rebranded in the ‘Brat’ aesthetic, leading to an an embarrassing wave of serious political pundits trying and failing to explain the ‘Brat’ phenomenon.
In a four-star review of ‘Brat’, NME wrote: It all paints a picture of who XCX is in 2024. Growing pains, grief and aching doubts come alongside self-confidence, celebration and the knowledge of the place XCX holds in the musical landscape – indeed, she kicks off ‘360’ with the knowing: “I went my own way and I made it / I’m your favourite reference baby”. With ‘Brat’, XCX demonstrates that going her own way will always sound pretty good.
Charli is currently on a UK victory lap tour for her whirlwind year, where she recently debuted her remix of ‘So I’ in tribute to SOPHIE.
The post Watch Bob Mortimer reveal if he had a ‘Brat’ summer appeared first on NME.
Max Pilley
NME
