Wendy Harmer: ‘I ran away from the Oscars as fast as I possibly could and fled into the night’ | Wendy Harmer

I like to bore everyone relentlessly with this story over and over because I can’t quite believe it happened to me. There I am in 1998, standing in the bathroom of a suite in the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California. It’s about an hour before I have to be in a car to go to the Oscars, the real live Oscars at the Shine Auditorium.

And I was thinking to myself as I was looking into a mirror about Kate Winslet, who was nominated for an Academy Award that night for Titanic. ‘I think she’s not looking into a mirror right now with wet hair, in a maternity bra, and having a quiet weep.’ As I was looking in the mirror I thought: ‘You know what? My fringe could do with a bit of a trim.

I might just have a hack at it with these baby nail scissors.’ And of course, whoops! That was a bit short. So there was my fringe sticking out like a cushion. A bit of background. In 1998, I was working on the Today FM morning crew with Paul Holmes and Peter Moon, and we were top of the ratings in Sydney.

No. 1 FM, just braining it. So management decided that we should go and cover the Oscars. We had done it the year before but that time we weren’t invited to the live Oscars. We just broadcast back to Sydney from Kiss FM in the San Fernando Valley out of a broom cupboard. We just watched the Oscars go to air with everyone else.

Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads But in 1998, they got us real live tickets to the real live Oscars at the Shine Auditorium. We were broadcasting from the Beverly Hilton in a conference room. And one of the incredibly exciting things was that Merv Griffin – you know, Mr Griffin, who invented Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, and who was the host of The Merv Griffin Show and had 25,000 guests over the whole run of that show – he came to visit us downstairs.

He was a sleek silver fox and he told us stories about how he used to hang out with Marilyn Monroe. I was absolutely transfixed. One of the other great guests we had was Dyan Cannon who played Whipper Cone in Ally McBeal. She even baked us a tray of her very famous muffins. I remember sitting next to her and coveting her yellow ostrich leather vintage handbag, the most divine handbag I’d ever seen in my life.

I had to ask about it. She said: ‘Oh, this bag, Cary gave it to me’. That would be her ex husband, Cary Grant. All I wanted to do was snatch that bag and sprint down Wilshire Boulevard. And that would be enough for the whole trip. Anyway, we had to get up fairly early in the morning to send the show back to Sydney.

By the time we finished we only had an hour before taking a limo to the Shine Auditorium. At the time, I was breastfeeding a four month old baby, and I’d had an emergency caesarean and I was not a well woman. I shouldn’t have been on a train to Dubbo, let alone attending the Oscars. I was breastfeeding and hormonal and I’d hardly slept.

But my husband had come with me so he was taking care of business with the baby. The night before, I opened my suitcase to find that the frock I had packed to wear to the Oscars was covered in tiny moth holes. There was no time to get another dress, I just had to hope that no one would see the holes.

That made me cry even more. We finally got into the limo and off we went. Me with me moth hole dress and me too short fringe. View image in fullscreen That ‘terrible, terrible dress’ and two enormous wet patches … Wendy Harmer at the Oscars in L.A. Photograph: supplied by Wendy Harmer When you go to the Oscars, when one goes to the Oscars, you drive around and around and around for hours – past all the homeless people begging for work and all the ad work actors saying ‘Hire me!’ and you finally get to the Shine Auditorium.

You step out of the limo and there’s this almighty roar. It’s not for you, of course. No. No one knows who you are. But you can hear this roar from all the people in the bleachers, and there’s helicopters flying overhead and lights everywhere. It’s really hot. It’s like being at the centre of the universe, you know? We walk down the red carpet and, you know, one side’s for the nobodies – people like us and the PR agents and the backstage people and all that sort of business.

And the other side is for the stars. Anyway, then the lights were switched off and on and we made our way into the Oscars. Bit of a tip here. If you are going to the Oscars, don’t head upstairs to where you think the drinks will be because you can’t get back down into the foyer where all the stars are because they all mill around on the lower floor.

The hoi polloi go upstairs to have a glass of champagne or whatever, and you can’t get back down again. All I could do was clamp my handbag over one breast and clamp my souvenir program over the other breast We take our places. We’re sort of in the nosebleed section, you know, but we’re at the Oscars.

That’s pretty cool. About halfway through the show I started to get thirsty breastfeeding mother thirsty, incredibly thirsty. So I thought ‘I’m going to duck out into the corridor and see who I can find and get a glass of water’. So I ducked out of my seat and went into the corridor and I ran into Shirley Jones, the mum on The Partridge Family.

That Shirley Jones, a big music star. But for me, I was thinking ‘Widowed mother of five on The Partridge Family. If she can’t find me a drink of water, no one can.’ We got chatting and she found a glass of water. She was absolutely as adorable as I always thought she would be. She said ‘What are you doing here? How old is your baby? He must be so little and how cute.’ And at that moment, I could almost hear the sound of silk Georgette shrivelling around my two nipples because I had forgotten to put any nursing pads in.

So there I am. I burst into tears and I was standing there and Shirley Jones is trying to patch me up. And I’ve got moth holes and I’ve got this bad fringe and I’ve got these two enormous wet patches on the front of my terrible, terrible dress. All I could do was clamp my handbag over one breast and clamp my souvenir program over the other breast.

And I went back in and took my seat. And I sobbed the rest of the way through the show. I came out and of course I couldn’t pick up a drink or a little snacky canapé thing because I had no free hands. So I ran away. I just ran away from the Shine Auditorium as fast as I possibly could and fled into the night.

And that was my story of going to the Oscars. Management got tickets for us to go back to the Oscars in 2000. But by that time, I’d had a second baby and I was so honestly traumatised I thought ‘I cannot possibly go to the Oscars and risk this again’. So I didn’t go. A year later, we did go back for the Emmys.

It was just after 9/11 and the event had been delayed and delayed and delayed. It was extraordinary because we had these US Marines checking over and underneath our car for bombs and everything. And then we had to go through this whole labyrinth of corridors to get to the Emmys. And I got lost. I popped out of a door and I saw a set of steps that were topped with a sparkly curtain.

‘Oh, that must be the entrance that you go through.’ And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I ended up gatecrashing a live interview between an E! news reporter and Kelsey Grammer. I don’t think I’m destined for awards night. I might just leave it at that. This is an edited version of a Full Story episode from The Tale I Dine Out On series..