90th Academy Awards

Special M-Net (*101) 21:00 Awards

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel is back in the little gold man’s arms, hosting the Oscars for the second year running despite criticism and the trauma of 2017’s Best Picture flub in which the wrong film was announced. “I dream about it every night,” jokes Jimmy. “I can’t even open the mail because of all the envelopes. It just piles up!” So much for the highlight reel, but just who is this funny man running tonight’s Oscars?

1 The 50-year-old grew up nerdy and has played bass clarinet since he was 12. He actually wanted to play the trombone but got the instrument names mixed up at music class. 2 In high school, the ex-altar boy was so disruptively funny in class that one teacher limited him to just one joke a week. 3 He started hosting his late-night talkshow Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2003 but stopped doing his own writing on the show in 2005. 4 Every episode since 2005 has had a gag about Jimmy’s “feud” with Matt Damon (Jason Bourne in the Bourne franchise, 2002current). It started after one “lame” episode in which Jimmy spontaneously ended the show by claiming that they wouldn’t be featuring Matt as their weekly guest star because they had run out of time. 5 Comedy is a family business, says Jimmy. “Our family values humour – definitely more than cleanliness.” His sister Jill is a comedian, his brother Jonathan is a director on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which also employs Jimmy’s son Kevin (24) as a production assistant. Jimmy has to take medication for 6 the sleep disorder narcolepsy.