What is eating Adele? It was the blockbuster singer-songwriter’s year at the Brit Awards once again, and quite rightly so. 

Her personal reputation may have been tarnished by the chaotic cancellation of her Las Vegas live residency last month, but she remains Britain’s most universally admired contemporary pop talent. The 33-year-old picked up three awards, to add to the nine Brits she already has in her locker. Yet she seemed oddly unmoved by the whole occasion. 

She performed I Drink Wine from world-beating album 30, seated on top of a piano and backed by a small band. You have to wonder why she didn’t just do the same thing in Vegas? But while she is simply too fantastic a singer for it to fall entirely flat, she displayed little of the showstopping energy of her breakout performance of Someone Like You at the Brits in 2011. There was a world of thought and feeling flitting across her face as she delivered the line “So why am I seeking approval from people I don’t even know?”

The first person to win Album of the Year three times, Adele also collected Song of the Year for comeback single Easy On Me and Artist of the Year, a category that has replaced the Male Solo and Female Solo awards in our benighted times, meaning that she saw off closest rival Ed Sheeran in direct competition. 

“I wasn’t expecting this one,” she sniffed, suggesting a cynicism has crept into the once open-hearted star. She risked throwing herself into the culture wars by sceptically noting: “I understand why the name of this award has changed but I really love being a woman and a female artist.”