By Nuray Bulbul BBC News

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Lewis Capaldi and Dave are leading the nominations at this year's Brit Awards, which will see Jack Whitehall once again host the ceremony.

The number of awards has been cut, as organisers promise more music and fewer acceptance speeches.

Tuesday night will mark the 40th Brit Awards ceremony in total - the first ceremony actually took place in 1977, but it didn't become an annual event until 1982.

The Brits have provided many memorable moments over the decades. Here are 10 moments that will be kept for the archives.

1. Madonna's unscheduled trip down the stairs

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Madonna had the wardrobe malfunction to end all wardrobe malfunctions when she closed the 2015 Brit Awards with a lavish performance of her new single, Living For Love.

The star's long, flowing cape did not detach as rehearsed earlier in the day. As a result, the dancer who was supposed to sweep the gown away actually swept Madonna off her feet and down a flight of stairs with a sickening thud.

Madonna proved her professional status by picking herself back up and carrying on as if nothing had happened.

"I had little bit of whiplash, I smacked the back of my head," she later recalled on The Jonathan Ross Show. "And I had a man standing over me with a flashlight until about 3am to make sure I was compos mentis."

2. Freddie Mercury's last public appearance

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Queen frontman Freddie Mercury made his final public appearance while collecting an outstanding contribution award at the 11th Brit Awards in 1990.

Fans were used to seeing the dynamic singer dominate the stage but, on the night, guitarist Brian May spoke on behalf of the group. A gaunt-looking Mercury ended the speech with a simple, "Thank you, goodnight".

It wasn't public knowledge at the time that the star had been diagnosed with Aids three years earlier. Even the band weren't informed at first.

"We actually didn't know what was wrong for a very long time," guitarist Brian May later recalled. "We never talked about it and it was sort of unwritten law that we didn't. He just told us that he wasn't up to doing tours, and that's as far as it went."

Mercury died in 1991, a day after making his diagnosis public.

3. "Theresa May, where's the money for Grenfell?"

Stormzy closed the 2018 ceremony with a rebuke to then-prime minister Theresa May for her handling of the Grenfell Tower Fire.

In a furious rap, he demanded: "Theresa May, where's the money for Grenfell?"

He then accused the government of hoping the public would forget about the disaster, adding: "You're criminals, and you got the cheek to call us savages. You should do some jail time, you should pay some damages. We should burn your house down and see if you can manage this."

At the time, the government said it had pledged £58.9m for Grenfell, of which £30m had been spent.

• Reality Check: Where's the money for Grenfell?
• What happened at Grenfell Tower?

A year after the tragedy, Theresa May wrote in the Evening Standard that "the initial response was not good enough".

4. Lord Prescott gets soaked

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was happily watching Fleetwood Mac play Go Your Own Way at the 1998 Brits when Danbert Nobacon, from the anarchist pop band Chumbawamba, leapt onto his table and emptied a bucket of iced water over him and his wife.

"That's for the Liverpool dockers!" he screamed, in reference to New Labour's inaction over a two-year labour strike in Merseyside.

Chumbawamba had previously opened the ceremony by performing their hit single Tubthumping, changing a section of the lyrics to: "New Labour sold out the dockers just like they sold out the rest of us".

Prescott called the incident an "utterly contemptible" and "cowardly" publicity stunt; and Nobacon was handed to police by his fellow band-member, Alice Nutter. He was later released after the Welsh politician declined to make a formal complaint.

Fourteen years later, Prescott got his revenge on Twitter, following the news that Chumbawamba had split up.

5. Adele publicly supports Kesha

Adele has a lot of history with the Brits.

She brought the ceremony to a standstill with her performance of Someone Like You in 2011, and was memorably cut off during an acceptance speech to make way for Blur the following year.

But a moment you may have forgotten about came in 2016, when the Tottenham-born musician lent her voice to the #FreeKesha movement during her acceptance speech.

Picking up the award for best female, Adele announced: "I'd like to thank my label for embracing the fact that I'm a woman and being encouraged by it. And I'd also like to take this moment to publicly support Kesha."