Letter from the editor: The Oscars 2011

Did I mention I was once on polite nodding terms with Colin Firth at the school gates? Or that I almost had a blind date with Helena Bonham Carter?

Unwittingly, she blew me out for an audition. But it’s my Six Degrees of Separation!

Feel a little jaded today. I made a big mistake when I got home from i the other night — which at least marks a change from making them at work. I turned on the telly, which I do most nights to see how i fares on the 11.30pm Sky News paper review (a touch sad, grant you, but i is still a baby that needs nurturing).

Then I settled down to Sky Living’s Oscars Red Carpet Live 2011. Come on, all this “no celebrity gossip nonsense” has to find a release. Suddenly, it’s 3.15am and the self-satisfied, cringe-makingly embarrassing Oscars ceremony is only halfway through, with none of the biggest prizes even in sight. It was all what my girls call “try-hard”.

The talented presenters James Franco and Anne Hathaway were stuck with a self-conscious script in an attempt, they said at least 15 times, to present “the young and hip” Oscars. Cue Franco with BlackBerry, tweeting mid-show, and telling us to “Google it” while Anne H gushed about movie “classics” that were ten years old.

So I gave up, missing Colin Firth’s typically understated acceptance speech and Bonham Carter’s cheeky Union flag garter. If you went to bed even earlier than me, the winners are on page 9 and all the fab frocks on pages 10-11. They come with typically pithy reviews from i’s esteemed fashion editor, Susannah Frankel. This time I’ve even promised not to over-rule her, as long as she’s not mean about Helena. I wonder if she had that garter 20 years ago?