The lights! The greasepaint! The bosoms! The gnarled and tree-like features of Dick Clarke welcoming us to the Beverley Hilton hotel! The red carpet the size and depth of the Red Sea, only without all the up-ended chariots and drowned Egyptian soldiers! All this, a pink tutu and U2 too! It can only mean one thing: the Golden Globes are with us once again!

(Oh dear, re-reading that first paragraph, I see that I rashly allowed myself to be carried away by the occasion and now I have already used up my entire stock of exclamation marks for 2003. Oh, folly. Now what will I do when the Oscars come round? I may have to pop over to the offices of the nearest glossy women's magazine and borrow some of their exclamation marks. They seem to have an inexhaustible supply.)

On the whole, I prefer the Golden Globes to the Oscars. There is no singing at the Golden Globes, for one thing, and the speeches are shorter.

It's true - I have seen entire acceptance speeches at the Golden Globes in which God was not mentioned once. This alarms me. The Hollywood God is a jealous God, and His sword is terrible and swift. What if He decided to teach the tribe a lesson, and one day the carpet outside the Hilton parted like a great red curtain to admit the procession, then suddenly swished shut again, sweeping away Callista Flockhart and Leonardo di Caprio in a great foaming tumult of suede and money. The Hollywood God knoweth all and sleepeth not, and He must be appeased.

'Wow! This is surreal! I never, ever thought I might win!'

Still, that's their problem, not mine. I enjoy watching Hollywood award ceremonies for the glimpse it offers into other worlds and cultures and faiths. Watching the Golden Globes or the Oscars is like peering through the windows of an excavated house at Pompeii to inspect the murals. We can use that glimpse to imagine their lives and to reconstruct the patterns of their beliefs and to marvel at the rich strangeness of their world, but to understand it fully, you have to be one of them. All in all, I am glad I am not. Watching the most conspicuous symbols of western values step from their limousines, all a-rustle and a-glitter with wealth, was like sneaking a peek at ancient Rome. It was a dark vision. To be of the Hollywood tribe suddenly seemed very much like building your house on the slope of a volcano.

Oh, but it was fun, as ever. Meryl Streep won an award, which brought back memories. She shimmered on stage in an outfit so shiny you could cut it up and use it to wrap toffees, to be greeted with a standing ovation of such rapture that I found myself trying to remember some recent act of heroism. Had she single-handedly rescued a houseful of orphans from a fire? Had she recently discovered a better and more effective cure for polio? No, she had won the award for best supporting actress in a motion picture.

There were some good performances among the winners. As always, I enjoyed Jennifer Aniston's astounded routine when she was named best actress in a television sit-com. The sharp breath, the stunned look, the trembling hand, the moist suggestion of imminent tears - it was a fine old-fashioned performance, a tribute to the grand days of Hollywood. Joan Crawford would be proud.

"Wow! This is surreal! I never, ever thought I might win!" gasped Jennifer Aniston, a little surprisingly, considering she won the same award last year and the year before that. "I love my job so much," she gurgled, which was a heartwarming statement from a woman who earlier this year threatened to quit that job unless the producers paid her more than a million dollars per 22-minute episode.

Still, Jennifer Aniston did not even challenge for the title of the lamest acceptance speech. Some schlub named Tony Shalhoub walked away with that one. I forget the original category in which he won, but he levered himself on-stage and began by announcing: "I have so much to be grateful for." There I sat for the next few minutes, with millions of others like me around the world, while some undistinguished actor boasted about his beautiful wife, his big home, his enormous bank balance and the relaxing holiday he intended taking. At that moment, he could consider himself fortunate he was not filling up at a Washington DC petrol station, with me across the road peering through the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle. "God bless you all," concluded Tony Shalhoub generously, "and God bless planet Earth!"

Why America's most famous Buddhist kept gasping 'Jesus!'

Uma Thurman put in a late charge for worst speech. Uma, alas, is looking just about as awful as you would expect someone to look who lives with Ethan Hawke. She resembled a Florida palm tree an hour after Hurricane Andrew had passed through town. "We all strive to, you know, improve and to app... appreciate, uh, this, like stuff," said Uma Thurman, hefting her Golden Globe with both hands and buckling a little under the effort. "It's so, you know, nice... um..."

There were cameo performances galore. Carole Burnett tottered on stage to demonstrate that she still looks and sounds like a toucan being slowly throttled with an invisible garrote. Martin Scorcese mugged and shrugged his way through a spookily convincing Woody Allen impersonation. Lara Flynn Boyle tippy-toed on stage in a frilly pink ballet tutu and shiny leg-strappings that still could not draw attention from the fact that she is the only man or woman in Hollywood without breasts. Richard Gere seemed appropriately pleased with his award, but precisely why America's most famous Buddhist kept gasping "Jesus!" as an expression of his excitement was left unanswered, just one cryptic ritual among the rest.

Ah, my friends, I tell you now to avert your eyes and rubbeth dirt upon your heads. The Hollywood God moves in inscrutable ways.