The worst movie follow-up by an Oscar winner is a straight tie between Halle Berry (Monster's Ball to Gothika), Denzel Washington (Glory to Heart Condition) and Anthony Hopkins (Silence Of The Lambs to Freejack).

The list of weirdest thank you recipients in an Oscar speech includes: hairdressers (Cher for Moonstruck), the maharishi (Rod Steiger for In The Heat Of The Night), childhood poverty (Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful), lawyers (Halle Berry, Monster's Ball), "grandpa Buster" (Gwyneth Paltrow), and "everyone I've ever met in my entire life" (Maureen Stapleton, Reds).

The official Oscar after-party – the Governors Ball – takes place in a ballroom at the Kodak Theatre.

The party's head chef – Austrian restaurateur Wolfgang Puck – has catered the shindig for the past 18 years. A hot favourite in 2011 was the King's Speech-inspired Dover sole and a Black Swan paella designed as a veggie-shaped tribute to Natalie Portman (a vegan herself). Fans of vérité cooking would be disappointedto hear there was no 'Squirrel Surpriz à la Winter's Bone'.

1,200 bottles of Champagne, 1000 spiny lobsters, 1200 Kumamoto Oysters and 18kg of caviar were some of the treats on offer at last year's Governors Ball. Recession smishspression.

The Kodak Theatre is the tenth venue to have hosted the Academy Awards. Oscar's other homes have included the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Ambassador Hotel and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Opened in 2001, the Kodak Theatre cost $94m – or roughly a third of an Avatar – to build. To date Stephen Lang has not tried to blow it up.

If you're in the area, Cirque du Soleil's Iris is showing at the Kodak Theatre this year.

The most frequent host is Bob Hope with 19 appearances. Best intro? "Welcome to the Academy Awards, or, as it's known at my house, Passover."

The longest Oscars show took place in 2002 and was hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. The ceremony clocked in at a bum-aching four hours and 23 minutes.

There are 3332 seats at the Kodak Theatre. If every Academy member turned up for the event, 2451 would have to bring their own seat or sit on the floor. Following the collapse of the Kodak Company, the naming rights are currently up for grabs. Hey, gather together a few million and it could be named after YOU in time for next year.

Dessert chef Sherry Yard uses 7kg of edible gold dust to decorate the 4000 miniature chocolate Oscars served at ball each year.

A ticket to the first Oscars at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929, would have set you back $5 – or $65 in today's money.

The first colour telecast of the Academy Awards took place in 1966, a year after American network television's transition to colour.

Seat-fillers at the Kodak Theatre are paid $125 for their nights' work.

37.9 million Americans tuned into the 2011 Oscars, not including those that nodded off during James Franco's opening gambit. Let's hope that Billy Crystal is a little less distracted this time around.