If only the writers' strike had still been on we might have had some real acceptance speech lunacy, the sort induced when the universe - actually the Academy of Motion Pictures but easily mistaken in the heat of ego - concurs with an actor's opinion of himself. We fondly recall Laurence Olivier orating “from the top of this moment”, Tom Hanks complaining that “the streets of Heaven are too crowded with angels” and Maureen Stapleton wishing to thank “everybody I ever met in my entire life”.

But the writers were making up for their lost earnings and had prepared the American award-winners for the best. Their thank-yous were brief and bland. It was left to the Europeans - and each time they won something you imagined another 100,000 Americans switching channels - to go mildly bonkers. France's Marion Cotillard, the Best Actress, thanked life and then thanked love: “It is true there are some mangos in this city.” (I thought she said “mangos”. Maybe she said “angels”.)

If she had underprepared the top of her moment, Best Actor Daniel Day-Lewis had over-rehearsed his. There Will Be Blood had “sprung like a golden sapling out of the mad, beautiful head” of its director. It must be hard for Thomas Anderson to know what type of surgeon to consult, brain or tree.

If there were a prize for best thank it would deserve to go to Tilda Swinton, who claimed that her Oscar was a dead ringer for her bald, tight-buttocked agent, the only person who could persuade her to go to America for anything. Anti-Americanism is not what the universe wants to hear when it is bestowing its accolades, and her rather charming fantasy about her Michael Clayton co-star George Clooney wearing a bat suit and hanging upside down between takes fell flat.

Bare shoulders and lots of red

Red frocks dominated the Oscars red carpet, with actresses demonstrating old-fashioned glamour in feathers and jewels

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Still, her Best Supporting Actress prize was the best revenge on Sky's fashion stylist Hannah Sandling, who had accused her of arriving dressed in a bin liner. These fashion experts are hired by TV to be cruel but really need to look like Joan Rivers for the joke to work on more than one level. Sandling was too young and not quite nasty enough, lamely accusing Cameron Diaz of not having made “much of an effort”. Over on the red carpet for Sky, Kate Thornton, whose brief evidently was different, complimented the actress on “a refreshing lack of make-up”. It has to be said that the E! channel's pre-ceremony coverage, led by the ultra-camp Ryan Seacrest - who informed a pregnant but unastounded Jessica Alba that he had no children - was better.

During the event proper, in a studio apparently overlooking Tinseltown but probably located in Osterley, Sky's Claudia Winkleman chatted between American advert breaks to a trio of commentators. They communicated a happy mix of knowledge and scepticism and were right to praise the Oscars' host, Jon Stewart, for his own mix of scripted cynicism and absurdist ad libs. The best of these followed a touchingly naive speech of acceptance by a scruffy innocent called Glen Hansard, who had won Best Song. “Wow,” said Stewart, “that guy is so arrogant.”

He had emerged on stage from under a giant lavatory paper tube. His unflashy dinner suit and proper bow tie (long black ties were the trend) declared that he was not going to try too hard to please. As the host of America's satirical Daily Show, he was certainly not going to let the studios forget their writers' grievances. “Welcome to the make-up sex,” he announced, but got in a good early jibe against Vanity Fair, which had cancelled its famous post-awards party “out of respect to writers”. Another way to show respect to writers, he offered, might have been to invite them to one. As for the former stripper Diablo Cody, penner of the surprise hit Juno, he hoped she was enjoying her pay cut.

Predictably, when Cody was recognised for Best Screenplay, she declared: “This is for the writers.” But the night contained more hack writing than bon mots. Harrison Ford explained as if to an audience of cavemen that a movie was “made up of ideas and pictures and words”. Movies, we were told by one celeb after another, were where dreams came true. Two or three times, performers slipped on a patch of grease as they strode toward the microphone. Could it be that at times of heightened intensity, sycophancy produces a physical residue, like ectoplasm?

It was all, obviously, too long - as Johnny Carson used to say, two incredible hours wrapped up in a four-hour package - and there were no heart-stopping moments, although my pulse slowed alarm- ingly during the fully staged rendition of three unmemorable numbers from Enchanted. But like all make-up sex, it was enjoyable, if only for the knowledge that we were lucky to be getting any at all.

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