Golden Oscar is just a tin idol after all

IT IS the season to be battered, willynilly, with Academy Awards factoids. My favourite is about the Oscar statuette itself: 13 ½ inches tall, weighing in at 8 ½ lbs, making it a formidable weapon, as was demonstrated in David Cronenberg’s Hollywood excursion Maps to the Stars, in which Mia Wasikowska bloodily clobbers Julianne Moore to death with one.

It is not, of course, made of gold, since at current prices — about

£985 an ounce — that would make it worth £135,000 just as scrap. No, the Oscar is made of an economical alloy called Britannium. And what is Britannium made of? It’s 92 per cent tin. Seems about right, doesn’t it?