After Red Nose Day, welcome to Red Face Day. The good, the great and the desperate-for-fame put on their glad rags and assemble in Los Angeles for the 73th Academy Awards Ceremony tomorrow.

TV coverage of the show will be watched by millions worldwide and with bated breath by producers and distributors who know that a win will add millions of dollars to the box office take.

But you'd think that with all the money floating around the movie capital of the world, they'd be able to put on a decent show instead of the rambling, cliched and all-too-often downright embarrassing production that passes for the Oscar ceremony.

People who can mount multi-million dollar epics, conduct delicate contract negotiations and market difficult movies, seem unable to stage a show that doesn't cause you to blush with embarrassment.

Presenters such as David Letterman, Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal who can be funny in other circumstances, fail to raise a titter. Actors, able be anyone with the aid of a decent script, are lost for words (if we're lucky) or simply ramble on and on and on (if we're unlucky).

Here are some areas in which Academy members need to beware if they are to spare our blushes.