My night at the BAFTAs
Curtsying to Helen Mirren, threatening to arrest Idi Amin - and being called "a fucking fool" by Daniel Craig

I am standing at the heart of the glittering glamour-dump of the BAFTA awards, and He is walking towards me. It is Bond. James Bond. His expression is an angry blank, because he has just gunned down dozens of Armenian bomb-makers. (Or perhaps because he has failed to win the Best Actor award). I was sitting almost directly above him when the award slipped from his bloody grasp barely an hour ago, and he offered a forced hard handclap, each meeting of his hands representing another small fracture in his heart. I knew then Our Time had come. What Daniel Craig needs now to comfort him, I declared to the people sitting in the Royal Opera House with me, is the love of a fat homosexual. "Daniel!" I cry as he strides along the corridor. He stares suddenly with his shimmering blue eyes. I smile. He does not. "Oh Daniel," I ask with a sigh. "Why didn't you wear your little blue speedos? Maybe you would have won then." He stares at me. Is it? Can it be? Love? "You're a fucking fool," he says, and walks away with an angry frown.

"There's no need to play hard to get Daniel! I'm yours!" I cry after him. But he is gone. This, it seems, is how my BAFTA night - my first peek behind the rope-line, into the vortex of Celebrity - will go. It began only a few hours ago, on the muddied entrance to the red carpet, where a great swathe of central London has been sealed off, as though it is subject to a Celebrity Terror Attack. I linger on the mud, naturally, until Her Royal Highness Helen Mirren appears. I immediately curtsy to her. "Are you all right?" she says with a frown, before being whisked by her equerries up into a thunderstorm of flashbulbs and howls of "Helen! Over here, Helen!"

I let her entourage storm ahead, and follow a few minutes later, as the crowd of Real People buzz with post-coital glee. By this stage, they seem to be screaming for anyone. "Oh my God! that's the producer of Shameless! Chris! Chris!" a group of teenage girls howl. (When did teenagers become TV industry nerds?). Then they see me, and one screams "Him! He's someone!" They stare carefully, and then their leader shrugs, "No, he's nobody. But - look! It's Nicky Clarke! Nicky! Nicky! Aaargh!" This I cannot accept. "Girls - he's a hairdresser," I snap. "He works with scissors, like a six year old. Youc an't cheer him." But Nicky Clarke glares at me from behind his bouffant and I run up the rest of the carpet, terrified he will spray his super-strength hairspray into my eyes and blind me forever.

I pass through the entrance, lavishly waving my black BAFTA pass at distracted guards, and drift through into the main foyer, where I smack face-first into a frenetic frenzy of networking. Business cards are being swapped with industrial speed; necklines are plunging like Thelma and Louise into the Grand Canyon. They are talking to each other in Celebrity Speak, which has lashings of hyperbole and always ends! in exclamation! marks! Somebody yells to the actor Ben Wishart, "Ben, I loved! Perfume! It was! an amazing! film!"

I decide I too must speak to Celebrities. I walk up to Richard Griffiths - another Best Actor nominee - who is occupying a sofa the size of a minor continent in the corner. But when I ask him questions, I discover he has been inexplicably turned into a Platitude Machine. "It's an honour," he says, "It's a privilege." This goes on for a long time, no matter what I ask. "It's such a joy to be nominated along side such amazzzzzz..." I'm not quite sure what he said next because I briefly lapsed into a coma. I stagger away and find Stephen Frears, the director of the Queen. His wife Annie declares at the top of her voice, "Well, I've refused to go to the Oscars, because it'll be even more ghastly than this! It's so bloody boring!" Her daughter Lola pinches her and says, "No more champagne."

But then a bell, and we are summoned to our seats for the ceremony. As I settle in, I notice that Sienna Miller has positioned herself next to Frears on the front row, whispering in his ear, flicking her hair, running her hands over her breasts, and pretty much doing everything short of mounting him there and then. But suddenly the lights come up in the Opera House. Jonathan Ross is standing in front of a massive lop-sided Bafta lying limply on the stage, whic looks as though it has just been severed from a gigantic golden body by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "Welcome," he declares, "to London's prestigious mugging district." He offers a special welcome to "our American guests who have flown here partly for these awards, but mainly to escape Victoria Beckham." The audience roars, and the giant BAFTA head rumbles, as though it is about to fall from the stage onto the front row and level the British film industry for a generation.

And then the ecstasy-slog of the awards ceremony itself begins. The obscure awards - Best Short Film, anyone? - pass in a surreal slur at the start. Most of the winners of the technical awards don't speak English, so they offer models of concision. "No speak English. Gracias!" one cries and exits. Another confines her remarks to the yell "Viva Mexico!" When the ex-Top of the Pops dancer Andrea Arnold wins an award for best tecchie newcomer, she says, "I understand money comes with this award and my boiler's packed up, so it's welcome." This adds a new note of tension to the night. Will Helen Mirren mention a patio extension she could really do with? Will Daniel Craig say his car engine's packed in and he'll be flogging his award on e-Bay to pay for it?

This glittery endurance test is only leavened by a string of kamikaze actors crashing and burning with impromptu 'gags'. Damien Lewis, the ginger Old Harrovian, decides the way to present the Best Cinematographer award is to pre-meptively insult all cinematographers. "I looked up the dictionary definition of cinematography... Well, my digital camera does that for me," he declares with a shrug. "But cinematographers make us actors look better than we are, so let's be nice to them." What? Then Dominic Cooper - an actor marinated in his own arrogance - comes out to present the best make-up award. He says, "Make-up artists have to make actors look good. Sometimes they even have to make us look terrible - and it's not always easy." With that, he raises his eyebrow, as if to say "I can't be uglied up, baby". At that moment, as one, the Royal Opera House heaves.

Jonathan Ross soberly introduces a reel of films paying tribute to the friends of BAFTA who have died in the past year. (The Artful Dodger is dead - who knew?). Robert Altman gets a cheer; others are passed over with a "who the fuck?" shrug. It seems that even the corpses are subject to status games. Some dead people are in; others are so last year.

But then the acting awards tumble out, and the audience shakes itself awake. Eva Green wins best newcomer with her hair jutting chaotically into the air, looking like she has just staggered out of Hurricane Katrina. Somebody tells me this is called "birds' nest hair". It must have been one psychotic bird. The victory of HRH Helen Mirren for Best Actress is so pre-ordained that when Ricky Gervais gave out an award earlier in the night, he declared: "The BAFTA for best animated film goes to... Helen Mirren! Oh, this is getting ridiculous. You can't even lick a stamp any more."

But the Best Actor award goes, amazingly, to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Borat-style, he remains entirely in character as a bumbling actor called "Forrest Whittaker" through the night, so I decide to challenge him at the post-awards dinner. "Mr Amin," I say to him as he faces the photographers in the Grosvenor House Hotel, "I think you were very cruel to the Ugandan Asians." He looks at me blankly. "I don't know what the BAFTA committee are thinking." I consider performing a Tatchell-style citizen's arrest, but he chuckles - no doubt the same chuckle he gave as he ordered ethinic cleansing - and says, "I'm Forrest Whittaker, m'man. It was a great film to make." Film? You might fool everyone else, Mr Amin, but I know who you are.

It is, I am told in hushed tones by the assembled hacks, an open secret that the celebs never go to the official after-show. So I blag my way into the Miramax Party, on the highest floor of the Hilton Hotel. As I step out of the golden lift, Penelope Cruz is sitting in the corner, chatting to Pedro Almodovar, and Jamie Bell - the once-and-always Billy Elliot - is wandering lost around the room with dead eyes, looking as though he was raised by wolves. In every creivice, people are looking at each other to make sure they are being looked at. This is the heart of the film industry, and it is - I suddenly realise - empty save for the glitter. But standing here, at the top of London, snubbed by Daniel Craig, Helen Mirren and everyone else, I think of an old Woody Allen line about sex. Sure, the BAFTAs are an empty and hollow experience. But as empty and hollow experiences go, it's one of the best.

www.johannhari.com

Если это правда, то я обеими руками за Дэниела, так журналюге и надо! В следующий раз последит за языком.

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