Of course the biggest question about the Oscars, this year and every year, is “Why?” Why is this lumbering, synthetic ego-fest for pampered, preening Hollywood luvvies — who, on the whole, are already vastly overpaid and overpraised for their modest level of talent — deemed the most newsworthy event on the planet?

After all, it’s not as if movie stars and directors don’t get “honoured” all that often. The truth is that if a film director can’t call himself “award-winning”, he or she has almost certainly never made a film. The showbiz magazine Variety estimates that in America alone there are now more than 300 annual award ceremonies in which luminaries of the movie world can bask their perma-tans in a flattering shade of limelight. Incredible. Six a week! Give yourselves a clap for stamina, darlings. Oh, you already have.

And that’s just movie awards. Add to that the thousands of prizes for luvvies who work in other fields — from the Emmys and Grammys and Mobos and Tonies to the Brits and Brats and Bookers and Bollies — and it’s clear that, in the world of showbiz, you really ought to get a prize if you manage to avoid getting a prize. It’s as rare an achievement as not getting a pass in GCSE Media Studies. The next time you read that a TV programme or personality has won an Emmy, remind yourself that 450 Emmys are awarded each year. In America there are shopping channels with Emmys.

I wouldn’t mind if the prizes reflected what we really thought about the winners. But that would require the invention of a whole new concept of awards. How about the Floppies, for the most overhyped dud movie of the year? Or the Nip-and-Tuckies, for the most improbably rejuvenated necks, faces and bosoms on parade on Oscar night? Or the Wafflies, for the most embarrassing thank-you speech? Or the Pukies, for the film or rock star who makes the most nauseatingly self-righteous humanitarian appeal of the year? Well, enough of that. One of the wonders of the modern world is that we no longer have to swivel our starstruck eyes dutifully towards Hollywood if we want to enjoy an awards ceremony. There are now hundreds of less exalted professions dishing out their own versions of the Oscars. True, they may not get the level of global media attention accorded to the Academy Awards. But they are probably just as entertaining.

So, for one day only, let’s turn the spotlight on some of the other back-slapping ceremonies around at the moment. Such as? Well, only last night the Achieving Customer Excellence Awards were handed out at the glittering British Council of Shopping Centres Management Conference in Edinburgh. What do you mean, you didn’t know that Britain’s shopping centres had their own council? Don’t you get out at all? You’ll be telling me next that you didn’t know about next week’s scintillating Scottish Grocer Awards either. Or that, only a few nights after that, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales hands out its Outstanding Achievement Awards. What a riot of glamour and charisma that promises to be!

Perhaps you are also unaware that the Jasmine Awards — which are, of course, Britain’s “premier awards for fragrance journalism” — are to be presented at the Waldorf next month. Or that the Dorchester will soon have the distinction of hosting the British Parking Awards. And yes, they are exactly what you suspected they might be — a “showcase for excellence and achievement in the UK parking sector”. Britain’s world-beating multi-storey car parks deserve acclaim too, you know. But even that glitzy night pales by comparison with the British Egg Industry Council’s annual presentation of its British Egg Awards. Who wins them? Well, British eggs of distinction, I guess.

Call me jaded, but I would much rather meet the people who have fought their way to the top in these unglamorous but vital industries than some puffed-up Hollywood celeb. Who would not love to have their gums cleansed by the British Dental Health Foundation Hygienist of the Year? Or their groceries totted up by the Convenience Stores Sales Assistant of the Year? Or their leaky roof repaired by the British Plumbing Employers Council’s Young Sheet Lead-worker of the Year? Or their plaice battered by the National Federation of Fish Friers’ Young Fish Frier of the Year?

And who would begrudge any of these honest toilers their hour of glory? Not me. Some years ago I was asked to be a judge at something called the Asian Women of Achievement Awards. In retrospect, I was a curious choice. Perhaps the organisers felt that, since I’m not Asian, not a woman, and have no real achievements, I could bring an unbiased eye to proceedings. Whatever, I found it revelatory. Looking in detail at one specific field of human endeavour brings home a general truth: that there are so many unsung heroes out there in the real world, so many flowers “born to blush unseen”, so many people displaying superb skills and exemplary commitment in draining circumstances — and not for fame or big bucks, but simply because they believe that if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.

And then there are Oscar winners.

Cheers to all our readers

If I have learnt nothing else in my 23 years on this newspaper, I have come to realise that there is no query so esoteric or erudite that several dozen Times readers don’t leap forward with the answer. Not always the same answer, mind, but that’s a mere detail. In this space last week I wondered whether Macaulay’s great line in Horatius — “And even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer” — meant that the Tuscan hordes did cheer or didn’t cheer. Well, exactly 50 per cent of your replies argue with incisive logic that, if you take Macaulay’s syntax literally, the Tuscans didn’t cheer. Unfortunately, the other 50 per cent or you marshal no less brilliant arguments to deduce that they did.

Back to square one, then? Not quite. I’ve just had a postcard from Sue Handoll, of Berwick-upon-Tweed — who is, she tells me, none other than Macaulay’s great, great, great grandniece. “They cheered,” she writes authoritatively.

That’s good enough for me. Or as her great, great, great granduncle might have put it: I can scarce forbear to agree.

Hour of need

My thanks also to the many readers who responded to my tale of woe last week — about my ailing 86-year-old relative and her 65-minute wait for an ambulance — either with expressions of sympathy or even more hair-raising 999 stories of their own. Ironic footnote: London’s emergency services have just won two “green Oscars” — Sustainable City Awards — for “cutting annual carbon emissions”. Since there now appears to be just one manned ambulance covering our vast swath of northwest London at nights, I’m not a bit surprised.

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