Want to know more than you can fit in your head? Well, you're living in the right age. The precise dimensions of a suspension bridge, the complete literature of Russia and the DNA records of a thousand serial killers can now be slung at your brain from a planet-wide selection of computers in a millisecond-long fibre-optic screech. Never have we been more effective in our delivery of fact.

Except when it comes to the Oscars. The whole Academy Awards palaver must be the most long-winded method of disseminating a tiny amount of information that has ever been devised. Staying up to watch them is about as efficient a way of finding out the results as building a time machine, travelling back to 1939, and then living there for six years, would be of discovering the outcome of the Second World War. It's all very well if you want to soak up the atmosphere, but the rate of delivery of pertinent facts could be matched by two Sinclair ZX81s sending each other smoke signals.

I'm missing the point though. Like all award ceremonies, the Oscars are an exercise in garnering publicity and prestige, in making people care about something that doesn't really affect their lives. The razzmatazz creates artificial jeopardy. When someone gets the results of a cancer test, they don't need a red carpet, a big ceremony and a thousand designer dresses to make them give a shit.

I'm not saying "film stars need to get a sense of perspective and be grateful they're not dead", particularly as one of the winners is (now that's what I call triumphing over adversity!). But I get annoyed by the amount of empty Oscar hype, largely because of all the glamour. I hate glamour. Glamour is boring. Show me someone who's genuinely interested in glamour and I'll ask you why you've introduced me to your twat of a friend.

For half the week, the papers have been full of dressed-up film stars smiling, accompanied by horrible articles about whether their outfits are deemed "hits" or "misses" - hundreds of presumptuous remarks by fashion journalists who think both that they know how to dress better than film stars do and, most infuriatingly, that that's a skill that matters.

It's ridiculous enough that this is attractiveness advice being dispensed to women who have shagged Brad Pitt by women who, I'm guessing, haven't - but it's also really rude. Everyone going to the Oscars has made an enormous effort to look nice. The polite response to that, in public at least, is: "You look nice." It's the thought and effort that counts - by all means have a pop at anyone who turns up in jeans and a T-shirt with gravy down it - but while they're all trying their best, we should say nice things or nothing at all. And if that means that fashion journalism as a profession becomes unsustainable then good.

Obviously people are always going to have a laugh when a film star on the red carpet looks daft; thinking about their lengthy deliberations to such little or counterproductive effect is funny. We've all giggled behind the backs of friends who come to parties dressed in something expensive and grim. I'm sure it would happen to me if I ever wore anything expensive.

But I resent the implication that those whose outfits don't pass muster with self-appointed fashion experts have let themselves down or been in some way deliberately perverse. Phrases like "no excuse" and "should know better" abound. Well, there's every excuse and why should they know better? It's only some actors togged up for a party. And they've been photographed. If they look like crap, surely the public can come to that conclusion unaided and without a leg-up of bitchy prose from a bitch.

I know this kind of reporting is nothing new and that the stars collude in the process because it's good for them to have their pictures in the paper, even in the context of some hack saying they look like a seal in a glitter bag. But that still doesn't make it OK. It's a nasty display of rudeness and a much better reason to get offended than hearing someone say: "Fuck."

The harshest sartorial judgment last week was reserved not for a Hollywood star but the wife of a British politician. Frankie Burnham, who's married to the culture secretary, turned up to the unveiling of a statue of the Queen Mother wearing what, from the reaction of some of the press, you'd think was a crotchless leotard covered in swastikas. It was described as "hideous and inappropriate", with a dress she did "not have the legs for" and a hat "left over from some awful suburban wedding".

This poses some questions. First, what is that journalist's problem with suburban weddings? Does she only attend sophisticated metropolitan ones as a matter of principle? There's nothing wrong with suburbia - it's where millions of us live and I hope her many suburban readers aren't duped into the knee-jerk self-loathing about suburbia that everything from Revolutionary Road to the music of Pulp has made a staple of our culture.

But the main question is whether she actually believes Mrs Burnham was trying to do anything other than wear something smart and appropriate. Because if not, she should shut up. Mrs Burnham's clothes looked fine to me, although I suppose they were quite cheerful. But then it was the unveiling of a statue, long posthumously, to a woman who had an amazing life, lived in a palace and died at 101. What exactly is there to be miserable about?

Whether or not Frankie Burnham judged the mood of an unusual occasion correctly, she was clearly trying to. If her aim had been to offend, surely she'd have gone further than a glimpse of knee and a floppy hat. Being unkind about someone's appearance under those circumstances is the only thing that is remotely hideous or inappropriate or disrespectful to the Queen Mother about the whole event.