Oscars 2009 live: the 81st Academy Awards as it happens

Welcome to Oscars 2009.

With Hugh Jackman tied up on stage at the Kodak theatre in LA, I'll be doing the honours through the night from Guardian Towers here in London. So do swan up the red carpet and take your seats

0.01am: The cast of Slumdog Millionaire seem to be dominating the first part of this Oscar night, just as the bookies are predicting they will dominate the last. Here come grinning Dev Patel and demure Frieda Pinto, who appears to have shown up without her "secret husband", which is a shame. Notebooks out, fashionistas: Pinto confesses that her dress is by John Galliano.

Still on a sartorial tip, Myley Cyrus seems to be going out on a limb with her number. Sub-editing Chai remarks that she looks 'like a mountain of doilies'. I'm hoping that Fearne will pursue this line of inquiry. 'Wow, Myley, you look both amazing and mad! Have you come as a mountain of doilies?'

11.50pm: What's become of the red carpet? Whither the Kodak Theatre? We seem to have become lost in the backrooms and corporate corridors of some infernal LA convention centre. Fearne Cotton has slipped the leash and is running frantically back and forth, shouting 'Wow!' and hugging passers-by.

Whoops, and now she's run slap-bang up against the child stars of Slumdog Millionaire. At least their air of unruly excitement seems genuine; an antidote to all the counterfeit glee that's wafting around their ears. "Can I just say that that was so cure?" coos Fearne afterwards. She can and she does, almost killing the moment into the bargain. Almost, but thankfully not quite.

11.39pm: Thanks for the early comments. Yes, Zoe Margolis, I have some industrial strength coffee at my elbow (perilously near my elbow) as I type. And yes, annapickard, the sole purpose of Jack being here is so he can get drunk off his arse (we tried for Helen Mirren but she was "unavailable", they told us). So right now he's sitting here in his tux, sober as a judge and as excited as a kitten. Come sun-up he will be rolling in a gutter, singing Moon River to a passing policeman. Coincidentally this is also Mickey Rourke's itinerary for the evening.

11.28pm: Have we time for an Oscar preamble? I'm guessing that we do, seeing as the carpet is currently playing host to Fearne Cotton, a irritable-looking woman in a black dress and a few hired goons dangling security passes around their necks. Time enough, I think.

What will win and who will lose? Evidence suggests (screams, more like) that most of the big awards are all over bar the presentation. The drumbeat for the likes of Slumdog Millionaire, Kate Winslet and Heath Ledger began with the Globes, continued through the Baftas and appeared to reach a depressing crescendo two days ago with the reputed leak of a winners' list that installed Slumdog as best picture, Winslet as best actress and Mickey Rourke as actor. Now it must be pointed out that the Academy have sworn up and down that this list is a fiction, a hoax, a tissue of lies, and that the votes were still being counted when it was sprung on the world. Cynics would contend that obviously this is what they are going to argue. What else are they going to say? 'Oh yeah, that's the list. Still, tune in anyway on the night of February 22 to see whether Angelina Jolie is wearing a white dress or a black one'?

Down on the red carpet Fearne Cotton is insisting time and again that 'the Oscars are mad'. People don't realise this, she asserts with the fiery, wild-eyed conviction of an angry down-and-out. The Oscars are mad! Pray God that the world will listen. If the Oscars are mad they need urgent help, and Fearne is but one woman; a lone voice in the wilderness.

11.12pm: Code amber at the 81st annual Academy Awards. Welcome, welcome one and all. To the liggers behind the cordons, the dignitaries in their limos and to the hoi-polloi like us, camped out in front of the TV set. The carpet is laid, the lamps are lit and the sharpshooters have taken up their positions on the rooftops overlooking the Kodak Theatre (presumably just a cautionary measure, in case Mickey Rourke gets too lary).

A swift note to those flummoxed by the time-stamp: we're working on Greenwich Mean Time, on account of sitting in a deserted office in London as opposed to, say, in row D, right next to Jack Nicholson. Trust this doesn't break the illusion. Right now, for instance, it is a shade after 3pm in California. The early arrivals will be showing up any moment now.