Take Your Seats, Ladies and Gents, for the Most Downbeat Oscars Ever

It has not escaped Lost in Showbiz's ever vigilant celebrity-monitoring satellite system that this Sunday is the Academy Awards - an event, we are given to understand, that's like the Brits, except about movies, and with better clothes, and without the creeping sense of cosmic despair that descends every time one is reminded that the Osbourne's exist.

Usually, of course, the buzz surrounding the Oscars is so intense that a cloud of anticipation is visible year-round in the sky over Los Angeles. But this year, what with the uncertainty created by the just-canceled writers' strike, Hollywood's hardworking public-relations personnel appear to have been caught off guard - with the result that the most buzz worthy thing that can be said about the 80th Oscars is that Paris Hilton has been banned from attending. And this despite having paid £2m for an Oscar-night dress by the 15-year-old Russian fashion designer Kira Plastinina. Talk about jumping the gun: everyone knows you should double-check that your invitation's in the mail before you pay £2m for a dress by a 15-year-old Russian fashion designer. Paying £2m for a dress by a 15-year-old Russian fashion designer before you get the invite? That just makes you an idiot.

Truth-'n'-accuracy fans should be advised, however, that none of the above may have taken place. Like super string theory, celebrity culture is a field permeated by an inherent degree of uncertainty, and verifying the precise nature of the Hilton Oscar ban is a case in point. The allegation has made its way into several fairly reputable American newspapers, quoting "UK news reports", which proves, on closer inspection, to refer to an item in the Daily Star, in which "a source" notes - with slightly too much literary flourish to be fully credible - that Hilton cried "hot, salty tears" in response to the rebuff. (Hilton's long-suffering "people" have not denied it, perhaps in hope of generating the show business equivalent of a sympathy vote.)

If it's true, it's a rough development, coming hot on the heels of the news that her new romantic comedy, The Hottie and the Nottie, grossed a mere $9,000 across the US on its opening weekend. In the film - lauded by reviewers as "consistently uninteresting" and "like watching a wall" - there is a woman who is beautiful and a woman who is ugly, and there is a man. Hilarity results, one assumes, although Lost in Showbiz will be unable to find out at first hand, owing to an unavoidable diary clash with a nap we are planning to take.

Not that Hilton will be missing much in the way of revelry on Sunday, by the sound of things. Half the ultra-glam Oscar parties have been canceled, most of the films in line for major awards are decidedly downbeat, and Hollywood in general seems in an uncharacteristically reticent mood.

One ancillary advantage of this is that it's been easier than usual to hold one's own in Oscar-related conversations with friends. All you really need to know, in order to appear knowledgeable, is a) that Jon Stewart is presenting it, b) that Paris Hilton might not be there, and c) that No Country for Old Men is a work of breath-taking cinematography, a directorial triumph, visually stunning, et cetera, et cetera, and that the enormous plot holes and interminably boring bits you seem to remember must have been figments of your imagination.