And the loser is… the Oscars!

The Academy Awards tanked in the ratings last night, with the audience dropping by 16%.

If the numbers firm up, then it will be officially the least watched Oscars in televised history.

As Hollywood wonders how the hell this happened, I offer my own theories, as somebody who loves movies and many of those who make them.

1) It was too long – waaaaayyyyyyy too bloody long. We’ve had raging debates for years about the Oscars being too white, too straight and too male, but the real problem is that it now drones on for an interminably dull length of time. Nobody has the patience for a movie lasting even two hours these days, let alone an awards show about movies that lasted 3hrs 48 minutes. My wife, who endured the whole thing in the early hours of the morning in Britain, looked like a flesh-eaten zombie by the end. If you want to get big Oscars ratings back then cut the night in half. No viewer will complain.

The show is TOO LONG. Speeches are too long and too dull. Oldman banged on for three minutes - despite the running offer of a free jet ski to whoever made the shortest speech

2) The speeches were also way too long and often excruciatingly dull. The stats don’t lie: in the early 1950s, the average length of an Oscars speech was 29 words; now it’s 174 words. Best Actor winner Gary Oldman banged on last night for nearly three minutes! This despite host Jimmy Kimmel offering a free $17,000 jet-ski to whoever made the shortest speech. I’ve said it to actors before and I will keep saying it: nobody wants to hear your laborious thank you laundry lists. Thank your parents, your partner, your kids, your agent and the people who actually paid for tickets to see your films (Jordan Peele was the only one I heard do this with any sincerity) – and then shut up. You can always tweet your unctuous gratitude to the other 100 names of people we’ve never heard of. Imagine how much more fun the speeches would be if every winner just said something similar to the brilliant Allison Janney’s opening words: ‘I did it all myself!’

3) For the love of God, can you all shut up about Meryl Streep? The constant Groundhog Day name-checks and references to her genius were particularly grating this year given her very close association to disgraced Harvey Weinstein, her shockingly hypocritical support for Roman Polanski and her constant anti-Trump political outpourings that have turned her from the beloved Queen of Hollywood into a reviled figure in much of America. A period of dignified silence from Ms Streep, and those who queue up to gush about her, is long overdue. Enough already!

For the love of God let's shut up about Meryl Streep? The name-checks and references to her genius were particularly grating this year. A period of dignified silence from Ms Streep, and those who gush about her, is long overdue

4) Slash the musical performances in half and get rid of the Best Song Category. This isn’t the Grammys and as we learned to the cost of our ears last night, a lot of actors just can’t sing. When Gael Garcia Bernal painfully rasped his way through sing ‘Remember Me’ – the smash hit from Coco – my mind drifted back to when I was a judge on America’s Got Talent and I longed for that red buzzer to cut him short and get him off stage. As someone put it on Twitter: ‘Someone give Gael Garcia Bernal a bucket because he needs some serious help carrying that tune…’ Exactly.

5) Remove the 10 most boring awards, like Sound Editing or Lighting Design. No offence to any of the talented and invaluable people who work in these departments, but they’re not stars so nobody at home either knows them or cares. When an emotional Kazuhiro Tsuji (who?) thanked his cats after winning Best Makeup and Hairstyling, I felt myself slip into a mind-numbing coma. These categories slow the pace of the show to that of a terminally ill snail. Same rule should apply to the “In Memoriam” section. This should only feature big stars, not the people who sat behind studio desks writing cheques.

Slash the musical performances in half and get rid of the Best Song Category. This isn’t the Grammys and - as Gael Garcia Bernal reminded us - a lot of actors just can’t sing. And dump the 10 most boring awards. When an emotional Kazuhiro Tsuji (who?) thanked his cats after winning Best Makeup and Hairstyling, I felt myself slip into a mind-numbing coma

6) Mash the montages. There were so many of the damn things, I’m only surprised there wasn’t a special extended montage devoted purely to this year’s montages. Why do need to see a montage of previous winners before a montage of this year’s nominees? It’s just more dead air time devoted to self-congratulatory bullsh*t. The montage celebrating 90 years of the Oscars felt like it lasted 90 years. And don’t get me started on the shameless ‘Isn’t warfare terrible/wonderful?’ virtue-signalling in the military one.

7) Ban all politics. Just make it a contract rider that if any winner or presenter mentions anything political, they get a lifetime ban from attending the Oscars again. This may sound a bit draconian but it’s so incredibly tedious watching rich, privileged actors bang on about their causes and issues. When Jennifer Lawrence announced last week she was taking a year off to educate young people about politics, the world’s collective groan could be heard from Tipperary to Timbucktoo, and I realised Tinsel Town’s pulpit preaching had officially jumped the shark. I love Jennifer as an actress and personality, but nobody wants or needs her to educate anyone on politics. Just make great movies, give fun interviews and bite your pontificating lip at awards shows.

8) Hire a host who can prick the pompous, self-adoring ego balloons lurking in every row of the theatre, with biting sarcasm and razor-sharp takedowns. They not only deserve it, they desperately need it. Movie stars spend the entire year being told how wonderful they are by myriad sycophants. For one night only, let’s see the spotlight fall on some of their imperfections, in a jocular way. And let it fall from the spike-tongued mouth of someone who truly doesn’t give a damn who he offends in the world’s epicenter of political correctness. No offence to Kimmel, who did a perfectly competent job last night, but you know who I mean… it’s time for Ricky Gervais to host the Oscars. I guarantee ratings would leap by 30% just on that announcement alone.

Hire a host who can prick the pompous, self-adoring ego balloons lurking in every row of the theatre, with biting sarcasm and razor-sharp takedowns. No offence to Jimmy Kimmel, who did a perfectly competent job last night, but it’s time for Ricky Gervais to host

9) More icons on stage, less B-list celebrities. The public wants to see Brad and Angelina, preferably minutes after they’ve had a massive backstage bust-up after the latest twist in their divorce battle. Or Tom Cruise jumping off Oprah’s sofa again like some unhinged whackjob. It all felt so tame, lame and risk averse last night - everything scripted to within one inch of its life.

10) Last but by no means least… stop giving the Best Picture award to obscure films very few non-movie people actually see, like or understand. The winner this year was The Shape of Water. Not seen it? The plot stars a mute orphan named Elisa who lives alone and has only two friends; a gay neighbour and African-American co-worker. She works as a cleaner at a secret government laboratory that receives a humanoid amphibian creature in a tank captured from a South American river. She then has sex with it. Yes folks, in the year of #MeToo and #TimesUP campaigns driven in the main by revulsion at disgusting monsters like Harvey Weinstein… the movie industry’s most prestigious body gave its most coveted trophy to a film about a woman who has sex with… a disgusting monster! Irony is dead, and they wonder why Middle America isn’t tuning in any more?

An STOP giving the Best Picture award to obscure films very few non-movie people actually see, like or understand. The winner this year was The Shape of Water, about a mute orphan named Elisa who works as a cleaner at a secret government lab that receives a humanoid amphibian creature in a tank. She then has sex with it