American viewers of the Academy Awards are, correct me if I’m wrong, denied the exquisite pleasure of seeing the pisspoor programming that overseas broadcasters cobble together to drop in when the US broadcast goes to an ad break. The live Oscars broadcast is handled here in the UK by my former employer Sky, an outpost of billionnaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. In days gone by they would have a presenter down the road from the event itself, with a succession of pundits and B-list Hollywood types. In these straitened times, however, as I discovered when I fast-forwarded through the recording last night, Sky’s interstitial programming extends no further than a lonely studio at their headquarters on the grubby fringes of Heathrow airport. The presenter, Claudia Winkleman, was joined by a couple of specky comedians, but the real treat was her third partner in exile, faded soap star Stephanie Beacham.
Older readers may remember Stephanie from her role in 80s Dynasty spin-off The Colbys, although also she popped up intermittently in low-budget horror and sub-soft porn numbers, and now graces Britain’s longest-running soap, the gritty and absurd Coronation Street.
Throughout the evening, as we saw actors young and old realise and reflect upon achieving their dreams, Beacham’s face was a picture every time we cut back to the studio. The pain was evident: seeing Kate Winslet pant through her acceptance speech, talking about how she’d been rehearsing the moment since she was an eight-year old girl practising with a shampoo bottle, must have been pure torture for Beacham. There were Kate, and Sophia, and Meryl, and Halle, and Anjelica and Anne - and here was poor Stephanie, sat in a warehouse under the LHR flightpath, wedged up against the two funnymen on an IKEA sofa, as if they were two tramps who’d flashed her on the tube.
The insecurity and self-regard of the acting classes fascinates me, and seeing Beacham squirm her way through the night was like seeing a strange amalgam of Krusty the Clown and Norma Desmond made flesh. Better than the show itself.
