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good lesson, for one thing – but the prospect of Tom’s foolery evaporating in a puff and a sniffle is perhaps the most appealing.
    Hanks himself hogged a good deal of camera time during Oscars 99 (M-Net, Monday, 8pm). There he lurked like a sinister scoutmaster in the second row, dewy-eyed and dimpling and practising the secret cub-scout handshake on himself. In a misguided effort to butch up, he has grown a scrappy new beard, which doesn’t so much create the effect of a rugged leading man as much as it does a hairy eraser at the end of a pencil.
    The Oscars play an important role in our collective sense of well-being. Far more revealing than paparazzi snapshots of Kate Winslet without her make-up or John Travolta without his cigarette, they offer a fleeting glimpse of what stars are like when they write their own scripts. Always remember Hot Medium’s first law of social success: under no circumstances appear in public without a script. Spontaneity requires practice, and original thought is like original sin – it only ever happened once, a long time ago, to someone who wasn’t you.
    Whoopi Goldberg, sad to say, did have a script, yet still contrived to throw me into the torments of embarrassment with which I suffer through bad speakers. For some reason she chose to punctuate every sentence with the word “honey!” (“Wooo, honey, this is going to be a long night!”), as though she were a bad drag act opening for Billy Ray Cyrus in a honky-tonk bar.
    Besides impersonal terms of endearment, there are two crimes unforgivable in a public speaker – one is repeatedly laughing at your own smutty jokes, and the other is noticing that no one else is laughing and demanding, like Whoopi: “Are you having a good time? Are you? Yeah!” All right!”
    Much like those other dreaded interrogations, “Do you remember what you did at the party last night?” and “Are you sure you love me?”, “Are you having a good time?” is a question only ever asked when the answer is bound to be roundly in the negative.
    Blessed relief from Whoopi-Cushion Goldberg was the delightful dance number, which demonstrated that choreographer Debbie Allen has lost none of the talent or taste that made Fame such a must-see programme in at least four households around the world in the mid-1980s. Let those who mock the artistic value of the Oscars watch a long-haired, bare-chested Spaniard tap-dance the theme song to Saving Private Ryan , and blush. When the dancer flexed his pectoral muscles in a moving tribute to the fallen soldiers, I could scarcely contain my bravos.
    But the magic of the Oscars lies in the winners’ speeches. My immediate delight that Tom Yanks didn’t win the best actor award was tempered by the realisation that Roberto Benigni had. Some may consider the chair-climbing antics of the excitable little continental chap charming, but I felt they lowered the class and tone that Debbie Allen’s dancers had tried so hard to establish. “I am surging with the love,” gurgled the little loon, once he’d made it up to the stage. “I am wanting to hug and kiss you all and put my tongue in your ears.” Perhaps Hanks had slipped something into his chianti .
    Steven Spielberg gave me pause for thought with his acceptance speech for best director. “I want to thank all the families who lost sons in the Second World War,” he declared. I wonder: what would be the correct response if you were one of the families being thus thanked? “It’s a pleasure” seems insincere. “Not at all, any time” likewise. Perhaps “Don’t mention it” might be closest to the mark.
    Anyway, it all paled next to Gwyneth Poltroon’s speech. Even Whoopi paled next to that speech. As poised and gracious as a block of processed cheese, as concise and pleasing as a song by Celine Dion, it had me regretting that Benigni