"Ah Marco! I trust that he'll live up to his typically mediocre yet disgracefully expensive standards. I need some unhealthy indulgence to help me recover from all the bloody awards bashes that I’ve been forced to attend this week. The Empire Reader Awards was easily one of the worst I’ve ever been to. The evening was presided over by an over-exuberant chap named Dermot O’Leary – I’ve never heard of him either. I’m informed that he’s a popular children’s television presenter. Well in future he should stick to linking cartoons on a Saturday morning because he was bloody hopeless as a master of ceremonies. I haven’t heard so many jokes fall flat since Noel’s House Party finished. Unfortunately he seemed to labour under the impression that he’s a great comedy talent – an impression I would be very quick to dispel if I ever met him face to face. Can we have somebody else next year please? Even Jack bloody Docherty would be preferable – Lord help us!

As for the actual standard of the winners – Jesus! I don’t know what the typical reader of Empire looks like but I suggest that anthropologists in search of the missing link should seek them out. Anyone who can name Vinnie Jones as Best British Actor 2000 has to be pretty far down the evolutionary ladder. Another bottle of the '82 Nuits-St-Georges young man!

The BAFTAs were just as bad. I don’t know whose idea it was to try and turn it into the self-styled ‘British Oscars’ but can they please bugger off? We’re British. We just can’t do glitzy award ceremonies here. Particularly when they’re held in draughty old cinemas in Leicester Square. It just doesn’t work. At least Stephen Fry took the piss all night. Note to the organisers of the Empire Awards – Stephen knows how to tell a joke. He doesn’t just read them out. There is a difference – do you see?

The awards themselves were given to the usual predictable candidates – ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’, ‘Gladiator’, ‘Billy Idiot’. I tried to get Russell Crowe and Tom Hanks to help me lynch Jamie Bell at the after-show party but they weren’t interested. To console myself I tripped up Mariella Frostrup as she was heading back from the loo. Honestly, you should have heard the language she came out with – I think it was Danish. Where the hell is my sherry drowned lamb?! My stomach’s starting to think that my throat’s been cut!"