A month ago, when the writers’ strike threatened to cancel the Oscars, most people in Los Angeles were holding their breath and crossing their fingers. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, they whispered, if we could just have the night off?

Hollywood would never admit it openly, but it views the Oscars in the way that Bangladeshis look at the annual flooding of the Ganges delta: as an unavoidable event that must be planned for and then grimly endured.

It’s not hard to see why. Oscar night, for those involved, is above all the prime event of the year for sucking-up and glad-handing. The following day thousands of backs ache from a combination of slapping and stabbing. Add three hours of red-carpet preceremony and three hours of thank-yous, right-on political messages and tears, and you can see why guests often feel that they are facing an ordeal of Wagnerian proportions.

Of the legion of people who cram themselves into the Kodak theatre – comprising academy members, nominees, industry insiders and their hangers-on – no more than a fifth are genuinely excited to be there. The others are either there just to prove that they can be – or because they have to attend.

For “talent” (the insider term for actors), it’s a crushing night for self-esteem. Watch the red-carpet coverage for an accurate indication of an actor’s placement in the Hollywood hierarchy: the bigger the star the later he or she can turn up.

Julia Roberts, George Clooney et al can show up minutes before the ceremony and be assured of commanding all media attention.

The earlier a star turns up the lower he or she is on the ladder. You need only chart what time an actor arrives from one year to the next to gauge how his career is going. Poor old Cuba Gooding Jr: once a 5.10pm star, now maybe 3.25pm.

It is even worse for the mere mortals who are there simply as the other half of a nominee. They are at the receiving end of a nonstop 10-hour tutorial in what it’s like to be invisible.

A friend who went to the Oscars with his wife – who was nominated for one of the lesser categories – tells me he was blatantly ignored at the postceremony governor’s ball. After two hours of silent and steady drinking, he decided to test his invisibility. He went to the loo and came out with his flies open and his underwear poking out. For the next hour he circulated, nodding and smiling at people who failed to register anything amiss – probably because they were looking straight through him.

Even when people of similar status meet at an Oscars party they talk to each other with both eyes firmly fixed over the other person’s shoulder. What of the agents and managers of nominees and winners? Well, they certainly don’t come to celebrate their clients’ achievements; instead they are there to erect a protective force field around their clients and stop other agents from making contact.

One agent – let’s call him Fred – told me that Joe, a rival agent, had homed in on his one “weakness”: the fact that he is a single parent. In fact, Joe was so intent on stealing a particular director from Fred when his back was turned that he hired a private detective to find out which babysitter had been hired to look after his son on Oscars night. The babysitter was duly bribed with $1,000 to call Fred at an Oscars party to tell him that his son was choking and she didn’t know what to do.

Horrifying behaviour, right? But what happened next was almost more disturbing.

Rather than leave his client unchaperoned and vulnerable to blandishments from a rival, Fred dispatched his assistant to deal with the choking child, reasoning that he wasn’t a doctor anyway – so what could he do that his assistant couldn’t? And the only reason I know this story is that Fred himself told me all the details – to prove what a “bitching, kick-ass, motherf***** of an agent” he would be for me.

No wonder so many await tonight’s shindig with some trepidation – although this year the feeling of dread is more palpable than usual.

For a start there is an eerie lack of buzz. Usually by the time the Oscars roll around, newspapers, magazines and television shows have been crammed for weeks with stories of the films, the stars, the tension and the latest romantic liaisons. Not this year.

The main reason for this is the unusual lack of blockbusters: the films that have been nominated are nearly all small-budget or from the artsy branches of the big studios. So no “tent-pole” titles such as Titanic, The Lord of the Rings or Gladiator – and no underdogs to root for because they’re nearly all underdogs.

Meanwhile, the acting award categories are packed with foreign names and underage actors. Did DiCaprio, De Niro, Pitt, Jolie, Spielberg, Nicholson, Streep, Cruise and Cruz take the year off? To American ears their replacements – Swinton, Cotillard, Bardem, Day-Lewis and Schnabel – sound more like a high-end law firm.

Worse still, most of the nominees seem to be happily married or in long-term relationships that simply aren’t generating the requisite column inches.

A (panicking) stylist friend points out that fashion is suffering, too. Since the writers’ strike ended only two weeks ago the lead times weren’t long enough to run up one-off dresses for the stars. And many designers allowed their best frocks to be worn at the Grammys, which were noticeably dressier than usual. So look out for a big swing towards “vintage” couture . Or so I’m told.

At least most people attending the Oscars can look forward to unharnessed bacchanalia at the after-parties. Not this year, though. The Vanity Fair party is the perennial golden ticket: cancelled. People start lobbying in November for an invitation to the Ed Limato extravaganza: cancelled. Soho House, where you’ll find most of the Brits, is usually a week-long trough of excess: drastically abridged.

So now people are faced with the chore of the ceremony and governor’s ball without the bashes that follow. Hardly worth shaving.

The final nail in the Oscars coffin is a rival show that is providing far more suspense, excitement, sexual tension, rumour, scandal, backstabbing and heroic underdogs. And the winner is: the American presidential election.

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