Carl Jones: I'm thrilled to Brits by thought of Oscars glory

So, actually, even though I have no inside information whatsoever apart from having sat through all the big new releases, that's exactly what I've started doing. Not for my own financial gain, you understand, but to try to use my knowledge for the benefit of local charities.

Last year, every single one of my predictions came in, and my accumulator charity bet earned £500 for the Midlands Air Ambulance.

So, lights . . . camera . . . action. You'll doubtless want to know where the smart Jones money is going this time.

Well, I reckon it could be a vintage year for the Brits, with amazing space drama Gravity and the powerful 12 Years A Slave leading a double-barrelled assault.

Gravity has already picked up six Baftas, so I'm hardly going out on a limb suggesting it will sweep the board in the technical categories at the Oscars too. OK, it has a Mexican director, but he lives in Blighty, and virtually all the effects wizards and technicians are brilliant Brits. So we're claiming total credit for everything.

Then there's 12 Years A Slave – directed by a Brit, and starring a Brit. It could be a big night for Steve McQueen and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the director and best actor categories. I expect Ejiofor to win for sure, and the harrowing drama about America's slave trade to also pip Gravity to the coveted best picture award. Cate Blanchett and Jennifer Lawrence to get the female acting awards, Frozen to be named best animated picture, and Jared Leto to get best supporting actor.

As for watching it all unfold on the telly . . . good luck with that. Unlike the Baftas which get a user-friendly Sunday night slot on the free-to-air BBC, you have to be real hardcore to experience the Oscars as they happen.

For starters, with LA eight hours behind us, the ceremony itself doesn't begin until the early hours of Monday, and even if you're tempted to burn the midnight oil, you have to be a subscriber to the Sky Movies Oscars channel (which has been dusting off some real classics over the past couple of weeks).

No, me neither. What you can check out tomorrow night, though, are the channels which home in on the LA catwalk build-up, which drag on even longer than a Lord of the Rings film.

My personal fave is the unbelievably über-American E! channel, a veritable smorgasbord of smothering fakery, fanaticism and facelifts.

Here, you'll find presenter Ryan Seacrest, the American Idol host, buddying up with his Hollywood pals with toe-curlingly irritating questions like "So, who are you wearing tonight?" Who? You mean what, surely Ryan? Ah, don't get me started on the endless butchery of the English language.

But I know what you're all wondering. Which lucky lad has been hand-picked to model the world's first sustainable tuxedo at this year's ceremony? You weren't? Well, if only for the pub trivia quiz, remember the name Kellan Lutz, star of that famously eco-unfriendly franchise, The Expendables.

And the award for the biggest PR gaffe goes to . . .