The Oscars have been known to bring the show in at just under three hours. Last weekend's BAFTAs managed to do it in a mere two.

So how come it took Saturday's Irish Film and Television Awards, supposedly the most glittering night in the Irish showbusiness calendar -- though only in the way the shiny wrapping on a hollow Easter egg glitters -- a punishing two hours and 20 minutes to get through the evening's celebrations?

Padding, that's how. There was enough of the stuff on display on Saturday to fill every mattress in the Burlington Hotel, the venue for this year's orgy of self-congratulation for a film and TV industry that doesn't have an awful lot to congratulate itself about right now.

We've made the point before, but the brutal truth is that there simply aren't enough films or TV programmes of sufficient quality out there to justify this annual festival of self-regard, which just seems to be growing bigger, longer and more risible every year.

Hunger, for instance, was certainly a deserved winner of Best Film, yet does anyone really believe that The Escapist, an entertaining if very silly prison break thriller, was doing anything more than making up the numbers?

There was an awful lot of time-wasting, too, with every nomination in every single category being announced via a clip and then ponderously re-announced all over again, just in case the audience had nodded off.

But there were some thoroughly justified winners in among all the dross. It was nice to see The Apprentice winning the Best Entertainment gong on a night when TV3 productions were virtually ignored.

Octogenarian filmmaker and archivist George Morrison, a toweringly important figure in Irish film production, was rewarded with a long overdue Lifetime Achievement award and had a documentary award named in his honour.

Mr Morrison, who made the unique and groundbreaking Mise Eire in 1959 and single-handedly rescued and restored vital archive footage from oblivion, gave a beautiful, elegant and modest speech.

"That man is a gentleman in a world of wannabes," said MC Ryan Tubridy, hitting the nail on the head but also seemingly missing the point that a large proportion of the luvvie poseurs and brain-dead eye candy decorating the Burlington's tables are themselves wannabes.

Elsewhere, though, the results were tediously predictable. The Tudors, which most people regard as so woefully cheesy you could grill it on toast, picked up its second consecutive Best Drama Series award (mind you, the competition consisted of Raw, Fair City and Ros na Run).

Bloated

RTE's bloated and self-important Bertie won for Best Documentary Series, elbowing out TG4's modest but imaginative Mobs Mheirica and TV3's excellent How the Irish Had Sex, which was easily the freshest Irish documentary series of 2008.

Still, at least the IFTAs threw up a genuine YouTube moment when Shane Richie, there to present an award, hijacked the evening with an impromptu stand-up comedy routine. Richie went on a bit, presumably because he'd enjoyed quite a bit of the evening's free hospitality, but at least he provided a small distraction from an evening of vanilla dullness.

The coming, credit-crunched year is going to be a difficult one for Irish television production, which makes you wonder if there will even be enough programmes to justify the IFTAs next year? Every cloud has a silver lining and all that.

STACEY'S STARS

The IFTAs * *

- Pat Stacey