The Oscars are nearly upon us and tension is building.

No, not for who might win the big awards on Sunday night.

But over which star can win the most coveted prize for Best Celebrity Trump Hater on the Planet.

This is the big one for all those hysterical Hollywood liberal snowflakes who’ve been frothing at the mouth since Donald Trump became President.

They’ve got live TV, a billion or more people watching around the world, and a room full of 3,500 largely like-minded souls all waiting to roar on every Trump-bashing speech from the podium.

Celebrities at the Oscars have got live TV, a billion or more people watching around the world, and a room full of 3,500 largely like-minded souls all waiting to roar on every Trump-bashing speech from the podium

All eyes, of course, will be on Meryl Streep, the Queen of Tinseltown and self-designated Chief Trump Hater, who has spent most of this awards season making ever more dramatic denunciations of her President.

I have no doubt that Ms Streep is beavering away right now on some more headline-grabbing anti-Trump bile.

But it’s worth remembering her words at the Golden Globes:

‘The instinct to humiliate when it’s modelled by someone in the public platform,’ she said, tearfully, ‘filters down to everybody’s life. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence.’

Does it, Meryl?

OK, well forgive me if I don’t now examine the way your fellow stars have used their own public platforms when it comes to discouraging disrespect and violence in relation to the President?

Who will win Best Celebrity Trump Hater at the Oscars? All eyes will be on Meryl Streep, the Queen of Tinseltown and self-designated Chief. Meanwhile Judd Apatow just said that after election night he felt ‘like a person about to get raped but I didn’t know how bad it would be'

This week, Judd Apatow, high profile producer of movies like 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, told a Los Angeles audience that after election night he felt ‘like a person about to get raped but I didn’t know how bad it would be. Now, I feel like I’ve just been raped. I just don’t know if I’m going to get murdered.’

The crowd wildly applauded.

Many of them, I suspect, had been on the recent Women’s March.

Yet they were happy to cheer a sickening rape analogy from a man who has repeatedly attacked Bill Cosby over claims that he raped women, and who just 18 months ago was even honoured by the Rape Foundation.

The audience cheered again when Apatow crudely mocked Melania Trump: ‘Every day she’s not in the White House, is a day she’s not getting f***ed by Donald Trump.’

And they whooped yet again when Apatow turned his tormenting turrets on Trump’s 10-year-old son, Barron: ‘He f**ing gets it. He knows his dad’s a f**ing a**hole!’

Nice stuff, right? Going after a president’s wife and young child in such a foul-mouthed, deeply unpleasant manner is, I’m sure, exactly what Michelle Obama had in mind when she said, ‘When they go low, we go high..’

During the recent disgraceful riots at UC Berkeley, just as protestors were seen on TV smashing windows, throwing smoke bombs and flares and setting fires alight, Apatow tweeted: ‘This is just the beginning. When will all the fools who are still supporting Trump realise what’s at stake?’

The coward then deleted his tweet, explaining: ‘I never support violence..’

Yes, you do, Mr Apatow. Just as you use rape as a shameful prop for your vile humour.

He wasn’t the only celebrity encouraging violence on the night of the Berkeley riots.

Comedian Sarah Silverman called for a coup, tweeting: ‘WAKE UP & JOIN THE RESISTANCE! ONCE THE MILITARY IS W US FASCISTS GET OVERTHROWN. MAD KING & HIS HANDLERS GO BYE BYE.’

Indeed, violence seems to be a running theme of these ‘peace-loving’ celebrity liberals.

At the Women’s March in Washington DC, Madonna shrieked: ‘Yes I’m angry, yes I’m outraged. Yes, I have thought a lot about blowing up the White House!’

Robert De Niro has repeatedly said of Trump: ‘I’d like to punch him in the face.’

Last night, at the BRIT awards in London, Katy Perry had two giant skeletons of President Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May dancing on stage and then set them on fire.

On Wednesday, at the BRIT awards in London, Katy Perry had two giant skeletons of President Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May dancing on stage and then set them on fire

‘Rise up! The Revolution is coming!’ Hillary-adoring Ms Perry tweeted after the election.

I think we can now see how that revolution would manifest itself.

Many celebrities have raced to brand Trump the new Hitler, one of the world’s worst genocidal dictators who murdered 12 million people, including six million Jews in the Holocaust.

Cher, who demanded Trump be ‘thrown in a volcano’, said his presidency would be like ‘Germany was in the ‘30s.’

Louis C.K. agreed: ‘The guy is Hitler.’

Richard Gere preferred a different dictator comparison: ‘He’s a guy who’s obviously Mussolini.’ Yes, obviously – because Mussolini was only responsible for 400,000 deaths.

Some celebrities who profess to be appalled by the disrespectful way Trump talks, have no such qualms when it comes to their own rhetoric.

‘I think he’s the f**ing most vile person on the planet,’ said model Chrissy Teigen. ‘A monumental a**hole.’

Andy Cohen concurred, calling Trump a ‘f**ing a**hole’.

Margaret Cho said Trump was ‘like no ply toilet paper.’

Amanda Seyfried called him a ‘snorting piece of garbage.’

The aforementioned De Niro said Trump was ‘a punk, a dog, a pig, a con…a fool, a bozo.’

Miley Cyrus branded him a ‘f**ing nightmare.’

Elizabeth Banks said he was a ‘fat old orange P.O.S.’

Rihanna stated he is an ‘immoral pig.’

Jennifer Lawrence had warned, ‘If Donald Trump becomes president, that will be the end of the world,’ and now says the only two words she’d want to say to him are, ‘F**K YOU!’ Robert De Niro has repeatedly said of Trump: ‘I’d like to punch him in the face.’

Jennifer Lawrence, who had apocalyptically warned, ‘If Donald Trump becomes president, that will be the end of the world,’ now says the only two words she’d want to say to President Trump if she meets him are, ‘F**K YOU!’

Johnny Depp, with a comical lack of self-awareness, said Trump is a ‘brat’. Well you should know, Johnny boy!

Much of the absurdly hypocritical hysteria surrounding Trump is driven by the fact that all these celebrities loudly backed Hillary Clinton and never imagined she’d lose, so they’ve gone into some kind of anaphylactic shock.

John Legend said before the election: ‘It’s pretty clear that Trump’s brand of politics is not a winning brand of politics.’

That complacent confidence turned into sneering arrogance, best summed up by Hillary herself when she branded Trump supporters a ‘basket of deplorables.’

An attitude that Chris Kelly, head writer for Saturday Night Live, embraced with this stunningly offensive comment after Trump landed the Republican nomination: ‘Donald Trump is winning because everyone you’ve ever been on a bus with gets to vote too.’

In the end, it wasn’t a bus these self-satisfied luvvies needed to worry about, it was the Trump Train.

Hillary and the Hollywood elites got run over by a candidate who tapped into real America’s cares and concerns, not the ones dictated from mansions in Malibu or the Hamptons.

What is truly laughable is that all these Trump-loathing stars would still have you believe they stand for liberal values of fairness, tolerance, peace, respect, equality and democracy.

Yet when confronted with their preferred candidate losing, they’ve resorted to exactly the kind of profane, ugly trash-talking and violence-encouraging nonsense that they claim to hate in the guy who won.

And anyone who dares to say anything moderately favourable or reasonable about Trump, even if they didn’t vote for him or particularly agree with his politics, must be vilified, banned, boycotted, firebombed and shunned into silence.

Their faux outrage is…outrageously sanctimonious.

Perhaps, though, the real reason so many celebrities hate Donald Trump is that he is now more famous than all of them put together.

Yesterday, the New York Times drew this conclusion after reporting evidence from data firm mediaQuant, which counts all mentions of a particular brand or personality in just about every outlet from mainstream media to blogs and Twitter, and then estimates what those mentions would cost if someone were to pay for them.

In January, Trump broke mediaQuant’s records, receiving $817 million in coverage.

This was more than the next 1000 of the world’s best-known figures - including Hillary Clinton, Kim Kardashian, Vladimir Putin and Tom Brady - COMBINED. (Their total came to $721 million.)

Given the fact there are now many people on the planet than ever before, and most of us now have access to the internet and social media, the Times declared that Donald Trump is now the most famous and talked about person in history.

So when Hollywood, the most fame-hungry, egotistical place on Planet Earth, rises to denounce him on Sunday night, just bear in mind that their fury might not be entirely unconnected to this one simple fact.

Trump, until recently a mere reality TV host, is now getting all their A-list celebrity oxygen and the only way La La Land can get a piece of the action is to attack him.

As H.G. Wells put it: ‘Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.’