James Griffin: It's MY precious, shrieks intruder

HUMOUR

Academy officials are trying to downplay an incident at last night's Governor's Ball during which Peter Jackson's Best Director statue was apparently snatched from his hands by a man-fish-thing.

Insiders say the first sign of trouble came when those at the Lord of the Rings table noticed a rancid, fishy smell.

Seconds later Jackson, who was tucking into a second helping of the asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, was heard to cry out, in pain, that "something bit my bloody leg!"

As Jackson's minders rushed to his aid, a small silver-grey creature with bad teeth emerged from under the table and made off with the Oscar, shouting,"My precious! My precious!"

Leaping from table to table, the creature harangued the assembled stars with claims that "he steals it from me, the fat hobbit, yes he does, he steals my award and Gollum make this movie, yes, Gollum deserve award, not hairy lump".

In the ensuing pursuit, the creature paused only to tell Keisha Castle-Hughes how much "we loves you in the Whale Rider, yes we do, yes, we loves the whale too, can we gets whale's phone number?" before scaling a giant Oscar statue where it sat, stroking Jackson's award in an odd and unsettling way.

"All the time the little freaky guy was doing, like, this really weird acceptance speech to himself, thanking himself for all his good work on the picture," said Kyle Davis, 23, a waiter at the event.

"Then he'd, like, spit in the direction of Peter Jackson who was, like, telling the little dude to give him his bloody award back."

Eventually the intruder fell from the statue into a giant bowl of punch and the statue was returned to Jackson.

As security guards escorted the creature from the room, it protested that the Academy was biased against computer-generated characters - "Yes it is, it hates us, treats us like dirt, makes us cry."

Jackson declined to comment, saying only that the incident was part of an "ongoing thing between me and the NZ Film Commission".