Ascot - Rick Roll'd?

Today I put in an 11 hour work shift at a box at Ascot Racecourse, in celebration for the Shergar Cup - an annual competition in which Ireland, Great Britain, Europe and the Rest of the World square up to one another to ultimately claim bragging rights as the nation (or continent) that possess the skill to be announced the best at horse-racing, in which Ireland triumphed emphatically; in perspective, second place Great Britain couldn't even amass half the points scored by the Irish.

Usually at Ascot, so I'm told, a race event can last anywhere up to five days, with most events taking up the extent of a day to complete. However, the Shergar Cup only took place between 1pm and 4pm, meaning that the rest of the day could be deemed as wasted. However, what can only be described as a celebration of the 1980's, a post-event concert was staged with past icons including Bucks Fizz, Curiosity Killed the Cat, The Real Thing and Howard Jones. All in all, the music wasn't quite to my taste - without being too critical, they just couldn't sing; even our guests in the box questioned their singing ability all these years on and seriously contemplating staying for more rounds of drinks to delay going to watch the concert.

What I found most interesting were the two words on most peoples lips when the concert was mentioned - perhaps the most famous artist of the lot, Rick Astley. From our manager in our team briefing, to our box guests, to the rubbish collectors, everyone seemed to either only know of or only seem interested in Astley.
Last night I tried, and failed, to sleep early in preparation for my 4am wake up this morning, and I began thinking about the concert. Even before today, I could tell Astley was going to steal the show, this ultimately proved right as he performed last, and sang half decent to say the least. The thing I was contemplative about last night though wasn't his voice box, but his publicity. People say there's no publicity like free publicity, and in Astley's case this really, really applies.

Anyone who has access to the Internet has hopefully heard of the term "Rick Roll'd". The phrase, coined through YouTube, was created years ago now by some wise guy who, instead of sharing a video about a subject advertised by the video title, cut the video short after a few seconds to be replaced with the music video for Astley's greatest hit "Never Gonna Give You Up". 39 million hits later, masses of YouTubers are doing the same thing, presumably designed as a trap laid out, ready to be sprung on the next intrigued, naive, or innocent person who clicks on their video. Such is the craze that Astley has become a huge hit on YouTube, with youngsters not even hitting their teen years becoming aware of the artist, boosting audience awareness considerably.
No doubt at the time the first video came out, Astley must have been feeling slightly cautious about how this would affect his image, but years on he's been recorded to have said the craze is "bizzarre but hilarious" and although "he's now over the whole Rickrolling phenomenom", Astley surely didn't have the craze far from his mind in his performances, both now and in the future.