’ELLO, ’ello, ’ello, what we got ’ere then? Huge expanses of corned-beef flesh, gnarled toes clawing frantically onto ill-fitting, borrowed Jimmy Choos and more satin jersey than Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom on a Bank Holiday weekend.

On “ladies half-price” night.

Why, officer, the clues are all there, it can only be one thing – the British Academy Television Awards 2009 (Sunday, BBC1, 8pm), where Britain’s finest telly types, predominantly soap stars, don inappropriate frocks or suits from the last funeral they attended and try to look American, as they shiver up the red carpet, gurning with cut-price dental veneers at some bored-looking paps.

It’s the same every year.

They try, bless them, especially the women, but few manage to pull off the easy glamour their counterparts across the pond, who look like Hollywood A-listers even when they’re taking out the bin, do so well.

Think Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie, Sex & The City), then think Beverley Callard (Liz MacDonald, Corrie); think Eva Longoria (Gabriella, Desperate Housewives), then think Charlie Brooks (Janine Butcha, EastEnders); and think Matthew Fox (Dr Jack Shepherd, Lost) then Michael French (Dr Jordan, Holby) and you get my drift.

So, wouldn’t it be better if they got real, stopped trying to compete and just went with the whole yellow teeth, dry shampoo and a nice cardi to fend off the cold thing?

I mean, it’s how we’re used to seeing them most of the time anyway.

Even the old troupers were looking decidedly low-rent.

J’accuse little Babs Windsor AKA Peggy “gerrrrrrrrourrrrramoipub” Mitchell, who was wearing a wig that was modelled on my mum’s hair in a photgraph from the sixties and a distressingly revealing top that merely served to remind me that I needed to add chicken fillets to my shopping list.

Ah, but we wouldn’t have them any other way, would we? It’s why we love ’em, warts and all.

Well, except for host Graham Norton, who is to awards ceremonies what nettles are to the Naturist Rambling Association.

He has the look of a man who’s thinking “when, oh, when will my multi-million-pound BBC contract come to an end and I can stop having to try to be funny in all these ghastly little shows that I don’t even like?”

Soon, hopefully, Graham.

Oh, and except for the goons on the judging panel who chose Anna Maxwell Martin for her role in C4’s Poppy Shakespeare over June Brown’s magnificent monologue scene in Eastenders for Best Actress.

Maxwell Martin is a big talent and her pock-faced Esther Summerson stole the show in Bleak House, but Poppy blooming Shakespeare was a dreary thing to behold.

It’s because it’s industry “experts” giving out the gongs and while they are happy to have the riff-raff’s bums on their theatre seats, they’re not so keen on them messing up the stage.

Brown is a class act, miles too good for ’Enders, who, given the right role, could walk away with an Oscar, and had she got the award she would have been the first soap star to win best actress in 20 years.

And the best soap (or Continuous Drama) went to The Bill (yeah, because everybody I know watches that), so she couldn’t even find consolation there.

Other shock wins went to C4’s Skins, who cheekily snatched the Philips Audience Award out of the hands of the likes of The Apprentice, The X Factor and Corrie.

Best moment of the night was when my hero, Harry Hill, beat the now immensely irritating Jonathan Ross in the category for Best Entertainer.

And the reason Harry won for the second year running?

He hosts a show where he takes a series of dull clips and makes them hilarious using his genius observations.

Ross, on the other hand, hosts a show where he takes a series of dull product-plugging celebs and makes them even duller by being embarrassingly sycophantic.

But who is really best?

Hill or Rossy? There’s only one way to find out – fight!

Now that I’d watch. And finally, I bow to the sound judgement of the great British viewing public, who yet again proved my theory that we are a nation who vote for nice people.

I give you Linda Evans, champion of Hell’s Kitchen 2009 and sweeter than six kittens, playing with sugared mice on a cushion made of candy floss.