Brit Awards 2014: Beyonce and One Direction make Brits most-tweeted about UK show ever

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Washington Bureau Chief

Twitter has revealed that Wednesday night’s Brit Awards was the most-tweeted about TV show in UK history, after 2.17 million messages were posted during the two-hour live event at London’s O2 Arena.

The first social media vote for Best British Video attracted another two million responses, after each nominated video was assigned its own unique hashtag. One Direction won that contest or rather, their 17.8 million followers did. John Newman, Naughty Boy, Ellie Goulding and Calvin Harris barely got a look in.

Harry Styles, the curly-haired one who claimed he "needed a wee" as an excuse for rocking up late on-stage, sent the most retweeted message in gratitude to his devoted 'Directioners'. For some reason, more than 150,000 people saw the following post worthy of sharing:

The Brit Awards also set a new UK TV record of 78,000 tweets per minute – that's 1,300 each second.

Beyoncé sparked the strongest Twitter storm to be crowned the most-tweeted about performer of the evening. The US pop star sung her latest single "XO" live for the first time ( scroll to read other highlights).

Some of the other 'highlights' included:

One Direction's Louis Tomlinson responding to James Corden's question of what advice he would give to Justin Bieber in prison with: "Stay strong and keep doing what you're doing"

Prince presenting Ellie Goulding with her award and James Corden snapping a selfie with him

Kate Moss accepting David Bowie's Best Male award and reading out a comment on Scottish independence

James Corden kissing Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw once again, because that's not 'done' at all

Lorde duetting with Disclosure despite the acts having met mere hours before

Lorde appearing to endorse Mastercard in her acceptance speech: "This really was a priceless surprise"

James Corden introducing award presenter Rosie Huntington-Whitely with a dig at double-barrelled surnames usually being for "horse-faced inbreds"

Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner trying so, so hard to be like the Gallaghers it hurt